Author Archives: Paul

Clifton sunset surfer

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Clifton sunset surfer
I'm quite out of my depth, but I can only guess that that's a longboard. Would I be right?

Anyway, the haze that you see there is from the cold ocean air moving in over the land. The water temperature at the time was only 12°C - which I'm guessing is why that wetsuitless mad surfer person decided to come in to shore.

In case you're wondering, I know it was 12°C because my friend and I (he with his thermometer-watch) hit the waves for all of 4 minutes. It was very unpleasant. Cold-sandy water, with plenty of seaweed constantly wrapping around our legs.

Everybody says Clifton's a great place to enjoy the view, play in the sand, and relax on the beach - but for swimming, she was certainly not made. Now, this is mostly the case, but I have to say that if you catch the tides just right, Clifton's water can actually be reasonably warm... even approaching a swimmable 19°C! ;)

2014’s Moonstruck at Clifton 4th Beach

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Moonstruck at Clifton 4th Beach
Each year around Valentine's Day one of our local radio stations, CapeTalk, hosts a huge beach party on Clifton 4th Beach, in aid of our much-loved National Sea Rescue Institute.

A stage gets erected, a band is appointed, and people flock to the beach with picnic baskets, bikinis, boardshorts and boomerangs (only kidding, Cape Town isn't in Australia). This year CapeTalk, and Discovery (this year's sponsor), invited The Solid Gold Session band to let their mix of 60s, 70s, and 80s hits spill out over the families and friends gathered on the beach.

I couldn't make it before 9pm, and really only arrived once the official party had stopped - but, just in time to see the full moon start to peak over Lion's Head. See the photos below. Isn't it pretty? Don't you wish you'd been there? :)

Clifton by candlelight

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Clifton by candlelight
During our warm summer months people come out to Clifton 4th beach to enjoy the golden sunsets, fine white sand, and windless conditions. Soon after dark the beach comes alight with the orange-yellow glow of candles, creating this, the perfect close to a hot summer day.

The temperature tends to fall reasonably quickly as the sun sets and the cool ocean air moves in over the beach, and it's the strangest feeling to leave the beach and the refreshing 19°C air and walk up the many steps to the parking areas to be met with the preceding day's oven-hot air.

If you are visiting Cape Town at this time of the year - pack a picnic dinner, add a few candles, grab a sweater, and head on down to Clifton 4th beach at about 18h30. Feel free to thank me later. ;)

Bikinis, beaches, and books

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Bikinis, beaches, and books
Clifton 4th, where I took this photo, is one of the most idyllic beaches on our coast. I say "one of the", but that's only to be nice to other beaches. :)

The thing that Kerry-Anne likes most about the beach isn't the sand, or sea water - hell no, she actually doesn't enjoy those much at all. But, hand her a book and an iPad together with a couple of G and Ts, and she can sit on the beach for hours.

We're both working next week, but I'm going to make a plan to leave work a little early (perhaps on Tuesday), pack in a drink or two, our iPads, and head over to one of Clifton's 4 beaches, or perhaps even Camps Bay if the wind isn't blowing. It's gonna be awesome!

Handprints and real irony

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Handprints on a black wall
I found these handprints on the wall of the Wellness Foundation, an organisation that supports people struggling with HIV/AIDS.

I would have written a little more about what they do, but ironically, Google lists the site with a note "This site may harm your computer." I dug a little deeper and found that Google found that the site is infected with malware that automatically downloads to your computer, potentially infecting it with a virus.

Now Alanis, that's irony.

Quiet coffee and dessert at the Cape Grace

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Coffee and dessert at the Cape Grace
If you'd like to go out for coffee and dessert, but don't feel like noisy crowds of people - visit the Cape Grace hotel. Their coffee's pretty good, and the dessert is simply divine.

Isabella’s – good food that takes a while

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Isabella's Restaurant
We recently discovered Isabella's in Durbanville's Heritage Square. Isn't the decor beautiful? Sure it is. In fact, the restaurant is almost as beautiful inside as it's cakes are on the outside. I've been on a low-carb diet for a while now, so I haven't yet indulged; but I'm biding my time, and soon we'll be devouring a cake or three.

Isabella's has an astonishingly-comprehensive menu filled with creative gourmet alternatives to regular burgers, wraps, salads and sandwiches. The portions are fairly substantial, and super-tasty.

Don't visit if you're in a hurry though. On both our recent visits it seemed like the restaurant's relaxed atmosphere intoxicated it's staff into a Sunday afternoon-like slumber. :)

But, the lack of speed and sparkyness is made up for by the surroundings and food. So, heed my advice if you're in a hurry, but do visit them if you have some time to spend.

The heart of good food in St George’s Mall

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The heart of good food
We don't frequent the open-air St George's Mall that often - so we were really surprised when we stumbled upon Fruit 'n Veg City, a fresh food chain that started off many years ago as an alternative to regular supermarkets, selling only fruit and vegetables (normally directly from local farmers).

In subsequent years they expanded, introduced more variety, branched out into selling meat, dairy, and baked goods, and is now in many ways South Africa's equivalent of the renown American Whole Foods Market.

This particular Fruit 'n Veg store (near the top of St George's Mall in Cape Town) surprised us a little - it was fantastic. The food looked especially yummy. The store was neat and squeaky clean. It wasn't thronging with people, and the variety of food was simply awesome.

If you're hungry and looking for take-away food (other than fast-food), then pop in at Fruit 'n Veg near the top of St George's Mall. I think I even spied an informal group of tables and chairs where you can sit down to quickly devour your meal.

Cold ‘n dark parking garage

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Cold 'n dark parking garage
"Cold and dark" would ordinarily imply dingy and scary, but cold and dark concrete parking garages are great in our summer months. Instead of parking out in the street, paying ~R10 per hour, and returning to a blazing-hot car, rather hunt down one of the underground parkades - like this one below Thibault Square. It normally works out cheaper and you get to return to a car that's absorbed the cool basement air. :)

Gotham City and the Central Methodist Mission

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Central Methodist Mission, Longmarket & Burg
It's hard to miss the Central Methodist Mission church building when visiting Greenmarket Square in the heart of Cape Town's bustling CBD.

Imagine for a moment that all the buildings in the city resembled this one's architecture. Wouldn't that be fantastically awesome and thoroughly scary, especially at nightfall? I guess it would then be mandatory to rename Cape Town to something more appropriate, like Gotham City.

Not that Gotham City looks exactly like that, but you get the idea, don't you? :)

Old Underwood typewriter

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Old Underwood typewriter
Based on the photos I saw on the The Typewriter Database, I estimate this Underwood Noiseless typewriter to stem from the 1920s or perhaps 1930s.

While I've never typed on this type of typewriter, I do remember writing school projects using my mothers old electronic typewriter. And, while I'm sure my parents thought that we had it easy (using a nifty electronic typewriter, with soft-touch keys) I can't help but think that kids these days have it really-really easy.

But then, perhaps kids these days simply have other challenges - like disciplining themselves to stay focused among the distraction created by our many digital devices and social platforms. Poor things. I pity those kids kids.

Steampunk Truth

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Steampunk Truth
Using steampunk couture to develop Truth Coffee Roasting's brand was a pretty smart idea - given the way in which espresso is made, of course.

If you're scouting for similar decor, the particular contraption to the right of this photo, with it's dozons of pipes, cogs, and levers was created by Chris Jones (email) from Psychedelic Steampunk.

A confusion of flora

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A confusion of flora
Once picked, we can refer to these as a bunch of flowers; but like this - I suggest we refer to this collective as a confusion of flowers. It seems like a fairly apt name, IMO.

After a blistering hot Friday, we had a strangely-cool Saturday, with plenty of cloud-cover, especially congregating around Table Mountain like a huge ball of grey cotton wool. Kerry-Anne and I headed out to the Alphen Hotel in Constantia to meet up with friends for lunch at La Belle, a lovely restaurant on the hotel's estate.

La Belle is pretty awesome - the service is great, and the food is superb. The pork neck I ordered was spectacular, the cheese cake was heavenly, but the coffee was unfortunately only average. I'd definitely recommend you visit La Belle though - you're sure to enjoy it.

No one looks tough drinking through a straw

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Street Art in Observatory
I discovered this piece of street art in Cape Town's eccentric suburb of Observatory, and right now I'm trying to imagine standing in a bar, beer in hand, sipping through a straw. It may as well be a pink beer... which reminds me of this funny advert for Windhoek Lager. :)

Farmish houses

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Farmish houses
These buildings are about 200 meters to the left side of the scene I shared in my previous post. I suppose one could call them farm houses, but they seem to me rather to resemble houses where the farm labour force live, rather than where a wealthy farm owner lives (which I suppose make sense, given that the farm owner is a large company).

Barbed wire sky

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Barbed wire
Those buildings in the distance are chicken broilers belonging to one of South Africa's largest chicken manufacturers. Oh, wait, manufacturers? I mean, they're one of South Africa's largest poultry producers.

Their brand name is County Fair (which I often mispronounce as Country Fair), but the company's actually called Astral Poultry, and produce feed, eggs, chickens and a variety of other poultry products.

The real brown cow

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The real brown cow
Contrary to my previous post - this is actually a cow, not a bull. And, you know, for some reason I never realised that lady-cows actually have horns!

Anyway, can you see how she actually looks female, while the one in my previous post looks male? I wonder if it's this obvious for all cattle.

The mountains of Stellenbosch

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The mountains of Stellenbosch
Those are the beautiful mountains that our little wine-loving town of Stellenbosch backs onto. Wouldn't you love to live in these surroundings?

We really do seem to have the best of both worlds here in Cape Town: We're almost surrounded by the ocean (as peninsulas tend to be), we have a great big mountain towering over our city, and we have big open winelands with beautiful blue mountain ranges. This truely is a remarkable part of Africa!

This photo was taken from the delightful Asara wine estate. The location on Google Maps has been wrong for some time now - here's a map I created to show you the way.

Truth’s old coffee machines

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Truth's old coffee machines
For the sake of general knowledge and trivia, did you know, the first steam espresso machine was developed and patented in 1884 in Italy by one Angelo Moriondo? That's not so long ago, now is it?

I found this gem at Truth Coffee Roasting, a popular coffee shop in Buitenkant Street. I'm sure it's no longer in use - they do, after all, have far more sophisticated espresso machines these days. But still, it's quite pretty - don't you think?

Not a hipster

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Not a hipster
This bike has definitley seen better days. It's clearly been very well used, and given that it looks like both wheels have been flat for some time, I'd hazard a guess that it's purely an ornamental piece, a not-so-trendy bicycle that Cape Town's hipsterati would certainly pass up in exchange for a more fitting mode of bicycular transport.*

* To be honest though, so would I, actually. ;)

How Table Mountain’s tablecloth works

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Table Mountain's tablecloth
If you've ever been in Cape Town and taken a long look at the tablecloth-like clouds covering the mountain, perhaps you've wondered how it is that there could be no other clouds in the sky, except for the sheet covering our flat-top mountain. Perhaps you've also been as transfixed as I've been, watching as the clouds roll down the side of the mountain, disappearing into nothingness.

What happens is that a warm south-easterly wind blows up the back of the Table Mountain range, until it reaches the summit (which is about 1000m above sea level) where it quickly cools down as it meets the cold air covering the top of the mountain. Because cool air isn't able to hold as much moisture, condensation and a thick cloud results.

The air continues to move towards Cape Town and Table Bay, and as it falls off the edge of the mountain it descends, meeting warmer air that's able to absorb the cloud's water vapour, making the cloud disappear, literally into thin air. :)

Suburb of lights

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Suburb of lights
No, it's not quite Paris (well, not even close), but the lights of the little suburb of Camps Bay look somewhat pretty at sunset, don't you think? It's a little trixy to see what I mean on this small version - so go ahead, click on the photo to see the big picture, and what I mean. :)

Clouds at sunset

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Clouds at sunset
The moon was just-about full, and I guess most thought it would be a perfect evening to hike up Lion's Head. The thing was, even though it's summer, and the day had been really warm, we had enough cloud-cover to obscure the moon almost completely - making the descent dark and slow-going. I remember looking at the top part of Lion's Head when we reached the bottom, noticing how the flashlights formed a sort of sigma symbol as they zigzagged down the hill.

The golden ocean picnic spot

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The golden ocean
The rock on which those folk are standing is a little lower down from the main pathway the leads up Lion's Head. Besides for the top of Lion's Head (with it's 360° views) - that's a pretty perfect place for a picnic heh?

Get fit on Lion’s Head

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Get fit on Lion's Head
It's a beautiful view of the Twelve Apostles and Camps Bay, don't you think?

On good-weather days hundreds of people walk up Lion's Head - and then you get the few like the two in the lower left corner that sprint up the hill.

The average person will take an hour, or perhaps an hour and a half, to walk up Lion's Head, whereas the two in this photo probably took only twenty or thirty minutes to hit the summit.

The problem with running up the hill is that as the path narrows and the cliffs become more treacherous, it's pretty darn dangerous for the runner and for the people they're running past. I think it was last year that someone graciously stepped aside for a runner, lost their footing, and fell to their death.

Use Lion's head to get fit - but don't endanger others - rather walk the narrow sections.

Hiking Lion’s Head from Signal Hill

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Signal hill, a view from Lion's Head
Friends enticed us into walking up Lion's Head on Friday evening. Truth be told, they never had to convince us - just look at the view!

We only arrived at about 19h00, a little later than we'd hoped. By that time our friends had already walked about 70% of the way up to the top, and we'd driven about a kilometer past the start of the hike to find a spot to park. We knew that we wouldn't make it to the top by sunset, so we decided to take a different route, around the right side of Lion's Head - starting from Signal Hill.

The route we took was quite a long, comfortable, footpath that winds around the top of Sea Point and Bantry Bay, finally taking a steep switchback route to meet up with the main path to reach the summit. This photo was taken on the switchback, just before reaching the main path.

I'll post a few more pics in the next day or two. It really was a pretty pretty sunset from above.

White roses, blue skies, pretty photos

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White roses, blue skies, pretty photos
I don't really enjoy talking landscape photos - I really like taking photos of people and of flowers. Not groups of people, or fields of flowers - rather more interesting and intimate shots; like the one above, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.

In a lot of ways I find taking photos of flowers is similar to taking photos of people, woman in particular I guess.