Cape Town – Gardens and Tea

We sailed around the southern point of Africa and start north up the western shore. Cape Town is just around the Cape of Good Hope. I visited here during my 2019 world cruise, so I signed up for completely different tours. This post will combine my two tours over two day, as while the second was very tasty, there aren’t many photographic events.

Table Mountain is a unavoidable visual landmark of Cape Town. My ship is docked to the north, so we circled the mountains to the east to get to Kirstenbosch Gardens. The view looked like this:

This is not the real flowering season, but they did a great job maintaining these grounds. I liked that they have a table at the very front of the site that shows what is flowering this week.

Just past the entry turnstiles were signs that explained how the South Africa region is a unique flower region in the world. I have never heard of the term “floristic regions” before.

Kirstenbosch is to the bottom-left of the below image.

In the end we had a three-hour wander in the park and saw plants, animals and artwork. I’m not going to provide a time-order story this time. Take a look.

Here’s a new one to me. “Cycads” are a plant/tree species threatened with extinction – mostly due to thievery. Huh?

That’s right, there is a black market for trees. The one below is surrounded by cameras and movement detectors. I guess it takes all kinds…

There are two pieces I really like.

It kinds of reminds me of my cheetah picture from last year:

Finally, the title of this piece is “Pleiades”. The Pleiades is a constellation of seven stars, also called the “Seven Sisters.” Here they are – the blue paint just jumps out of the surrounding living green.

Here are the animals; first, the Franklin pheasant, a type of quail. We were walking down the path and a mob of 10 just rushed pass us.

As we were leaving the heights of the park our guide spotted a napping spotted owl.

Right, that’s enough nature. It’s time for tea. The Mount Nelson hotel has been in Cape Town for over 125 years and served “high tea” since 1989 (we were eating around noon). They offer more than 60 types of tea and entirely too many pastries. I ate a million calories today. We started with a local rose champagne and a tea suggestion.

I learned a new way to brew tea. The “glass” strainer holds loose leaves and thru the small slots at the bottom allow water in and releasing the tea. When done just lift it out of the teapot and tilt it, thus draining the last of the water from the strainer.