I
finally dipped my toe in the car buyers’ market here a few weeks ago and
acquired myself a 1996 VW Jetta. It is a 1.8l four door salon, with 250,000 km
on the clock. Of course it is white, like 80% of the car fleet in Cape Town,
and a VW. They are pretty common here as they are manufactured in South Africa,
but I deliberately chose to forgo the rite of passage of owning a VW Golf, which
seems to be the custom for first car buyers here!
The Jetta is a bit bigger and older than I was intending to buy, but it came via the recommendation of a friend’s mechanic and was a
good price so I decided it was worth it. So far it is going well, although
being bigger than my previous cars, it is less fuel efficient than I am used
to. Petrol here is about $1.40 a litre or so, although with the sliding South
African rand, it may well go up again soon.
These
scenic shots of the car were taken near Darling, one the wild flower spots just
up the coast a bit from Cape Town. It has been a wonderful flower season due to
the good winter rains. I did a Sunday drive to explore a couple of reserves
around the Darling area a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed the chance to get out
of the car and walk through the vegetation. I had also enjoyed a trip further
north to another wild flower hotspot, Postberg, in the West Coast National Park
a few weeks earlier. A couple of carloads of us went up there for the day and
although the flowers, scenery and beaches were amazing, I got a bit frustrated
about not being able to get out and walk amongst the flowers. It was weird
driving slowly along in a convoy, as you do on a game drive, but looking at
plants – which really don’t move a lot and are not often startled! Still, it
was a fabulous day out, as some of the photos in the next post will attest.
My
other recent field trip outing into the hills about 2 hours north of the city
with some work colleagues, to check out some sites with invasive Australian
species. On the way to the sites, we passed through areas that could have been
anywhere in south eastern Aust, with large stands of various eucalypt and
acacia species. The landscape and vegetation reminded of the Kiewa Valley in
north east Victoria, and the weather (rain and hail) was also reminiscent of
that part of the world in winter!
But
enough of the vegetation, what about the cute furry animals? Well, I have been
privileged to see a wide range of species lately, not all of them furry though.
There was the snake crossing the road in the reserve just 10 min from home; the
dune mole with the huge front teeth in a restoration site in the north of the
city; eland, zebra and springbok in Postberg; and two different tortoise
species in Darling.
And
in the water, there are the whales. Muizenberg is situated on False Bay which
is a large bay opening up to the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Southern right
whales come into the bay each winter to calve and hang around for a few months,
cruising around quite close to shore. I have seen them on several occasions
while walking on the beach, just from the shore – you get a glimpse of a tail
or a jet of water from the spout, but to get the best views I go up the road to
the hill behind the bay and look down onto them. It is great watching them
there with binoculars. That’s where the official shark spotters hang out as
well – they are on duty all year round to look out for the inevitable great
white sharks, to warn the surfers down on Surfer’s Corner at Muizenberg. Last
weekend, a dying whale washed in very close to shore near my friend’s place, so
we went and had a look at it. We weren’t the only interested party – it
attracted a crowd of great white sharks, so the beach was closed for a couple
of days. Generally the sharks eat the seals which are very common - many live
on Seal Island just out in the bay. And very occasionally they will snack on surfers,
kite surfers and others species in the water…
The
other very cool fauna sighting was a few weeks ago at a bay a few km down the
road, where I saw 2 Cape clawless otters!!! They were gorgeous. They are
generally fresh-water dwellers but they do go fishing in the kelp beds just
off-shore. I had never seen otters in the wild before so I was very excited
about that!
So
here are the photos of the fauna, sorry there are none of whales but I don’t even
bother trying to capture them! The flower photos are in the next post as I am struggling to get them to load onto this one - I find trying to load photos and texts into posts very frustrating and problematic, so wont even bother trying with the sheer number of photos.
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| Cape Clawless Otter chowing down on a freshly caught fish |
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| Tortoise 1 and Tortoise 2... |
