The Fynbos and Food Festival Photographs

The Fynbos and Food Festival took place on Family Day, Monday 25 April at the Good Hope Nursery near Cape Point. The nurs­ery spe­cial­izes in indi­gen­ous plants and the staff, full of expert garden­ing advice were on hand to give tips and assist­ance. Lines of garden­ers (both bud­ding enthu­si­asts and keen garden­ers alike) waited patiently for a few minutes of time with the pro­fes­sion­als who poin­ted out plants and shrubs for sale around the nurs­ery. Stalls sold a selec­tion of pan­cakes, fresh bread, ginger beer and cup­cakes while live enter­tain­ment kept vis­it­ors tap­ping their toes as they enjoyed a refresh­ment in the tea garden or wandered the nursery.

Continued

Feasting where the two oceans meet

Views from Restaurant

Before we get into a lengthy debate, the tip of Africa is not the south­ern most point of the Cape. Confused? I was. But it's fairly simple. Cape Agulhas, also known as L'Agulhas, is the south­ern most tip of Africa – believe it or not it does lie fur­ther south than Cape Town. Whilst Cape Point, that glor­i­ous piece of land that juts out into the sea where two oceans meet, is the south­ern tip of the Cape Peninsula, often puzz­lingly referred to as the south-western tip of Africa (which is prob­ably where the con­fu­sion originates).

And the two oceans. Do they in fact meet at the Cape of Good Hope? Officially, the Atlantic and Indian oceans join where the warm water Agulhas cur­rent meets the cold water Benguela cur­rent and turns back on itself. The exact point is roughly one kilo­metre east of the Cape of Good Hope. So, yes this beau­ti­ful pen­in­su­lar can lay claim to this bit of fame – hence the res­taur­ant that sits perched on the cliffs over­look­ing the sea, just below the fam­ous light­house, at the very tip of the pen­in­su­lar, called the Two Oceans Restaurant ... Continued

Good Hope Nursery — at which we do a succulent walk, almost have tea and find rare plants

Good Hope Nursery

This is a gor­geous part of Cape Town. In fact, it hardly feels like Cape Town at all and in a sense it isn't, if you con­sider that it's right on the pen­in­su­lar and as far from the City Bowl as you can get and still be some­where close to a sub­urb. Not that those who live in Scarborough con­sider their vil­lage a suburb.

Good Hope Nursery isn't just any nurs­ery. Kudos to this crowd who have been around for the past 20 years at least – they lead the way in indi­gen­ous plants. Kirstenbosch get their plants from here, as does Table Mountain National Park, which says a lot in my book. And since my bet­ter half is a rather ser­i­ous ama­teur hor­ti­cul­tur­ist, stop we must. Besides which, our sprog is already unbuck­ling his seat belt to get at the children's play area right next to the little car park area. Continued

Cape Point Vineyards – wine, sea and views

Cape Point Vineyards

There are a few things that impress you about Cape Point Vineyards. For one, few people even know that a wine estate exists here just below the entrance to Chapman's Peak with incred­ible views over Long Beach (okay, you do have to hike it for about five minutes to reach the view­ing plat­form, but it's worth it, promise).

And secondly, des­pite some pretty impress­ive fur­niture, a 300-year old tapestry of Franco-Flemish ori­gin and a chan­delier of note, there is a pretty laid back atmo­sphere in the wine tast­ing room, in no small way due to the incred­ible duo of staff who handle demand­ing cli­entèle with aplomb. Continued

Flying Dutchman Funicular opening at Cape Point

Cape Point

I was lucky enough to attend the offi­cial open­ing of the Flying Dutchman funicu­lar at Cape Point on Tuesday morn­ing.  In hon­our of the occa­sion the rain held off and we were treated to glor­i­ous views from the Two Oceans Restaurant.

We were greeted at the entrance to the res­taur­ant by the wait­ing staff (dressed in Bafana Bafana sup­porter shirts) and were offered a glass of JC Le Roux’s finest cham­pagne before find­ing an empty seat at a table for speeches and a deli­cious Continental break­fast.  One of the high­lights of the morn­ing was the two songs writ­ten and per­formed by the res­taur­ant wait­ing staff — they should be per­form­ing at the World Cup Ceremony this even­ing … they would surely give Shakira a run for her money! Continued

A day at Cape Point Nature Reserve ...

So windy!

I am lucky enough to have friends who have a fam­ily cot­tage in the Cape Point Reserve. It’s beau­ti­ful — set almost right at the waters edge and it’s com­pletely private.  What a priv­ilege to be able to spend a week­end there.  However, that said, it’s so beau­ti­ful that once there we never seem to ven­ture any fur­ther into the park (apart from a week­end walk or two along the beach).  So, although I’ve been to Cape Point a num­ber of times, I’ve never really done very much exploring.

Last week­end my hus­band and I packed a small cooler box with a selec­tion of mezze, crack­ers, the now cus­tom­ary Fairview cheeses and a slab of chocol­ate.  We filled Stanley (does any­one else have one of these bril­liant flasks?) up with cof­fee and headed off along the coast, past Smitswinkel Bay to Cape Point Nature Reserve.  Typically at this point the pet­rol light came on so our after­noon plans of driv­ing many of the cir­cu­lar routes went out the win­dow but we did man­age to make it to the light­house! Continued

Cape Point Lighthouse Photos

'Any Person caught rolling down the cliff will be pro­sec­uted — by order Lighthouse Engineer' — So read the ori­ginal sign nailed to the wooden bound­ary gate of the Cape Point Lighthouse. The light­house at Cape Point is the most power­ful on the South African coast. It has a range of 63 kilo­metres, and beams out a group of three flashes of 10 mil­lion candle­power each, every 30 seconds ... Continued