Flower Feedback: Cape Point

I received another beautiful e-mail in response to my flower at Cape Point!

This is what it says:

My name is Liana Gilb and I had the privilege of crossing paths with one of your beautiful flowers at the Cape Point Lighthouse. I am 23 years and from a small town in the countryside of Virginia in the United States. I recently returned home from New Zealand, where I was living and teaching at a primary school for a few months. (I kept a blog, too!) 

I traveled to Cape Town on holiday with my family to visit my brother who is currently a student at the University of Cape Town. We ventured down to the Cape of Good Hope on Saturday, August 18th to celebrate his 21st birthday. The day yielded glorious blue skies and sweet sunshine; we could not have asked for a more perfect day to see the tip of Africa. I found your flower right before my brothers and I left the lighthouse to go explore the trails out to the cliffs. What a lovely place.

Your story is beautiful. I, too, have a deep appreciation for both travel and creativity and I am so encouraged by the way that you are using your talents to weave a story! Your words have blessed me and I look forward to seeing how your splashes of color continue to make an impression on others.

With love,

Liana

Every response is a blessing.  Please keep them coming.

African Flower Chain: Link 7

We spent two days in Cape Town visiting friends and family. The Cape saved it's most glorious days for us.  Blue skies and sunshine. No wind.  It was beautiful.

From there we followed the coastal road past Gordon's Bay, Pringle Bay and Betty's Bay into Kleinmond. This morning we visited the fisherman's harbour just as the fishing boats were coming in.

"Die snoek loop!" How could we resist? 

Snoek braai 'valie' style

My seventh flower is at the top of the stairs above the harbour in Kleinmond.

Flower Feedback: Augrabies

 I am absolutely thrilled!  I just received the first feedback on one of my flowers!

Val Marsh and her twin sister Marion Neethling from Great Brak River sent me these photos from Augrabies.

They passed through there on the 14th of August on their way back home from the Khalagadi Park.

This is great.  I am so happy to see the flowers are still there, and that people are reacting to it.  Have you seen a flower?  Please send me a pic. And a story.

African Flower Chain: Link 6

And then we reached Cape Town. 

It is still one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

And it was a glorious day.

We drove along the coast from the Fishoek side past Simons Town down to Cape Point.

From Cape Point we headed up the west coast towards Hout Bay. 

Just passed Llundudno we saw the sun set over the Atlantic for the first time in many years.

Flower No 6 is at the lighthouse on Cape Point.

African Flower Chain: Link 5

I planted Flower No 5 on the same day as Flower No 4.  I was trying to make up for lost time.

In Franschoek we stopped at the La Motte Wine Cellars.  We tasted and bought some excellent wine, but what impressed us most was the farm and Cellar buildings.  The original buildings are more than 300 years old. The new cellar, taste room, restaurant, etc was added more recently and in such good taste and style.  It is modern but very sympathetic to the original Cape Dutch style.

 But what blew us away was the art. The cellar buildings are decorated with Pierneef lino prints.  The estate also houses a Pierneef museum containing all the Pierneef paintings from his own collection.  What a sight! 

If you even remotely like Pierneef's work, do not drive past the La Motte estate.

From Franschoek we traveled to Stellenbosch where I planted my fifth flower.  It is at the entrance of "Oom Samie se Winkel" in Dorp Street.

African Flower Chain: Link 4

So, we've had snow and ice. Then we got rain.  Lots of rain.

From Augrabies we went to Pella.  Pella is a very small town on the banks of the Orange River.  It started as a Mission Station many years ago. The Catholic Church in the center of town is still very much the hub of the village. We stayed over on the Klein-Pella Date Farm not far from the village.  We camped right on the banks of the river, with no-one else around. (Except for a troop of baboons in the nearby bushes)

From Pella we traveled through Namaqualand.  I hiked through there last year this time and I was expecting carpets of flowers. We got buckets of rain.  And cold.  The flowers that were there were hiding their faces from us. 

We camped in a very wet Springbok and then traveled on to the Ceres mountains where we stayed over in Citrusdal. Wet again. We could see the snow on the mountains.

The next morning the rain looked like it was lifting.  We chose the scenic mountain road from Citrusdal to Ceres, passing over and through the Ceder Mountains.  An absolutely gorgeous part of the world.  There was water everywhere.  It ran down the mountain and formed waterfalls and cascades where ever we looked.

That night we stayed over on a beautiful farm called Fynbos Guest Farm between Ceres and Tulbagh.  It is a beautiful place with lots of animals to entertain the travel weary kids.  Geese, chickens, pigs, sheep, donkeys, goats, horses.  Name it and it was there, and ready to be pampered.  For the first time in many days the clouds cleared and we could see the stars. It looked promising.

We woke up to clear blue skies.  What a gorgeous sight. 

Snow-capped mountains in bright blue sunlight.

Again we took the scenic route through the Boland, traveling through Worcester, over the Franschoek Pass into the Franschoek valley.  Another breathtaking sight.

Franschoek is where the French Huguenots settled after their arrival in the Dutch Colony in the late 1600's. Today it is prime wine country with many vineyards and world class Cellars. 

I placed my fourth flower at the Huguenot Monument.  It is on a bench behind the statue.  The monument is such an impressive structure that I tried to put it in an unobtrusive place.

We loved these few days.  After eight years in the desert we marveled at all the rain. We loved wearing thick warm clothes and our eyes drank in all the wet scenery.

African Flower Chain: Link 3

Our next stop was Augrabies National Park.  The weather looked promising after the previous nights cold. The sun was shining and life was good.

Augrabies Waterfall is in the Orange River close to where it becomes the border with Namibia. It is the dry season so the falls were rather 'small' according to the locals.  Still it is an impressive site.

We camped in the park above the falls and woke up to monkeys trying to steal our breakfast!

My third flower is at the lookout point right above the falls.

African Flower Chain: Link 2

After a two day stop-over in Klerksdorp to visit old school friends, we are back on the road.  

We took all the back roads which lead from the highveld of North West Province to the Kalahari of the Northern Cape. 

We passed farmland and quite a lot of mining activity on the way. We spent most of the day on the road and only reached the Witsand Nature Reserve at sunset.

We woke during the night from rain (and cold) and when we looked outside this morning there was ice everywhere!  The rain froze during the night. The officer at the Reserve told us they had never experienced this before.  Another cold first for us.

Two very common sites in this area:  Huge 'versamel voel' nests where many birds live together in a sort of 'apartment block' and Springbok.

I left my second flower at one of the lookout points in the reserve.

Have you seen it?

African Flower Chain: Link 1

Snow. Not something I often associate with South Africa. But yesterday, we had snow in all 9 provinces of the country.  We received our rental camper in the snow and we arrived back in Pretoria in the snow.  What a way to start our trip!

We set off from Pretoria from where we followed the Magaliesberg Range to the west.  All the time with heavy cloud cover and cold.  Near Rustenburg we turned away from the mountain towards the south west. 

We passed Derby, Koster, Ventersdorp and arrived in Potchefstroom in the late afternoon. The countryside changed from Bushveld to Highveld. We saw different antelopes, a warthog, lots of ground squirrels and mongoose and a wide range of birds. It felt good to be back in this country.

We have a lot of family history in Potch.  My mother went to school and university there, my Mother-in-law grew up there, my father-in-law studied there and my husband did his army training there.

There are lots of stories to tell about the family and their history in the town and university, so it was appropriate to start my chain of flowers here. I tied my first flower to the street-name post on the corner of Gerrit Dekker and Steve Biko streets.

Gerrit Dekker was a professor of Afrikaans literature, and an author among many other things. Steve Biko was an anti-apartheid activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement. 

Let's see where this chain leads us. Are you following?

Never too young...

The Princess trying her hand at crochet