What do you think this is?
...and this?
In reverse order, this last one is a bus shelter, with two single bricks knocked out at eye level, presumably for use as peep holes when it's raining.
The second one is a letter box, not a kennel or the smallest house in Cape Town!
In fact, as I jog round the neighbourhood I notice some really interesting and creative letter boxes. Few homes have a regular letter box in the door, like in England, either because they have gates or to save the postman walking down the drive. Here are a few of the most quirky ideas...
...a converted milk churn...
...a concrete structure...
...a little house...
...a piece of plastic pipe... (which the paperboy hasn't used!)
...a barrel...
...a (very small) hole in the wall...
...and an untidy collection of metal boxes.
This last one is situated just outside the main gate of our apartment block and contains our box (number 30).
A previous occupant must have lost the key one day and prised open the door. Now it doesn't lock and we have not bothered replacing the padlock, like most of the others. Fortunately we don't receive much mail.
On the other side of the white wall is another gate, which is the exit gate. On Saturday a removal van got stuck trying to enter through that gate...
After a great deal on shouting and maneuvering, it backed out again, leaving chunks of rendered concrete scattered over the ground. Then all the loading took place in the car park, outside.
So, to the first , which I'll repeat here...
It is a model of an African bush house, made from a telephone directory. The roof and sides are constructed by folding each page in a certain way. Eddy, the electrician who's been working with Andy, makes these as a hobby. I was fascinated by the way the dark lines appear, demonstrating the uniform layout of the book. Eddy gave us this one, as a gift - I fear that it will be too heavy to take home!
Southern Right Whales have no dorsel fin and can be identified by their V-shaped expulsion of water from their blow-holes. I really tried to capture one in a photo - to no avail.
Another characteristic of the Southern Right is huge Callosities on their head and face. These are scaly, white areas of whale lice which form in the same places that hair forms on our head and face, with males having more callosities than females, particularly on the chin and upper lip, rather like a beard.
Our friend Stuart had gone shark cage diving and this is an example of the type of cage he stood in hoping to see some Great White Sharks. Unfortunately, his trip was cut short due to rough seas, so he never saw one. We however, did see two shark fins approaching one of the many shark cage diving boats in Shark Alley, a swath of ocean running along the southern tip of Africa.
Dyer Island, situated in Shark Alley, is home to 40,000 Cape fur seals: they covered the rocks and filled the sea, swimming very close to the boat. They were so cute to see and hard to accept that many of them would become a shark's dinner!
The final leg of the trip was to a rocky outcrop where African Penguins are breeding. You can just see some on the left hand side of the light-coloured rock. African Penguins stand only half a metre tall and we have seen them much closer at Simon's Town, where there is a penguin sanctuary.
...the sun is just creeping over the Hottentots Holland Mountain range, and a bird in mid-flight - quite accidental..
...the rising sun is shining on the duck pond, making it look like a pool of gold...
This wooden shack is where Cynthia lives with her four children.
The township is a sprawling mass of small houses and wooden shacks. Most of the red-roofed houses in the foreground are habitat homes.
