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Sarah sat an examination today, so I took a day off work to get her to and from the venue. The exam was a doddle and my photo-journalism associate McCracken McCracken and I later headed out for a walk. McCracken McCracken has been moody of late and is on strike but, quite fortuitously, I happened to have my camera with me, and so took these snaps.
The above indigenous plants, larger pictures of which can be seen here, are called vynbos.
Cape Town is home to the Cape Floral Kingdom, the world's smallest and richest plant ecosystem, comprising 7,500 endemic species. A hardy flora, well-suited to a windswept cape and seldom rising beyond shrubbery, vynbos has a peculiar attraction.
The Table Mountain National Park alone has more plant species within its 22 000 hectares than the whole British Isles or New Zealand. A stretch of land and sea spanning 90 000 square kilometres, or 0.05% of the earth's land area, the Cape floral kingdom contains roughly 3% of the world's plant species - at about 456 species per 1 000km2. Of the 9 600 species of vascular plants (plants with vessels for bearing sap) found in the Cape floral kingdom, about 70% are endemic, ie occur nowhere else on earth.Savaged by 'development', fire, drought, and alien plant species, our local vegetation has been through tough times of late. But we're ridding ourselves of alien invaders and the Cape Floral Kingdom is fast rejuvenating itself.
I digress. Nature's plenitude has nothing to do with this post. My poser is: given these pictures, where the hell are we? Only the last picture in the series offers a meaningful clue and, even then, it's pretty obtuse. We're definitely in Cape Town, but where in Cape Town are we?
It's a well-known, specific place.
My guess is that the correct answer will come from somebody who either lives in this part of the world or knows it well.
