My Summer in South Africa: Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden & Table Mountain

Sunday, July 3, 2011
Tried to do laundry today, but got all the way down the hill just to find out the laundry place is closed on Sundays, so we had to hike back up the hill with our dirty clothes. The rest of the day was relaxing, just read my book and worked on a paper.

Monday, July 4, 2011
Happy 4th! We had a field trip to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens today with our guide Laurence Kruger. Kirstenbosch has thousands of endemic species of South African plants, many of which are found only in the Cape peninsula! We saw some sunbirds, which were very brightly colored (beautiful) and a sugarbird, which is a small nectar-bird with a tail longer than its body! In the evening, we headed to the pub down the street from our dorm and had a beer in honor of the 4th! Happy birthday, America!

Guinea fowl, they are everywhere! Notice how much they resemble dinosaurs!

Cool aloe plant.

Awesome old tree in Kirstenbosch. If I remember correctly, this was here before the gardens were built.

Cool protea!

Another cool protea, the King protea!

Pretty flower!

Laurence, our guide, teaching us about the animal that does the most damage... Not a large herbivore, but mice!

The Orange-Breasted sunbird, so pretty!

Adam and I in a Rondavel.

The clouds were engulfing Table Mountain, so cool! There is often a large cloud blanket over Table Mountain and not a cloud in the rest of the sky.

The sunbird, check out that tail!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Since yesterday was an all day field trip to Kirstenbosch, we only had the chance to head to the pub for 4th of July, but today was a free day, so we did laundry, read some of our novels for class and had a BBQ! It was a lot of fun! The boys immediately flocked toward the burning coals to man the grill and the girls happily waited for the boys to cook up the feast! After the BBQ we watched a movie called Mapantsula, which is about Apartheid, so sad! Learning about the history in a book is one thing, but our field trips and the movies we have been watching have made it that much more vivid for us and have definitely had an impact!

Loverswalk Rd ♥

Being studious in the warm winter sun!

America.

Adam and Nick, the grill masters!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Today's field trip was to the top of Table Mountain! We took a gondola-type thing to the top, which was 1,085 meters up. Laurence came with us again, which made it that much more rewarding! If I could take a field biology class with him, I absolutely would, his knowledge and enthusiasm of nature is infectious! Table Mountain is cool because it is like a table, flat on top, and you can therefore see Cape Town from every direction. We hiked around the top, from one side to the other. It was beautiful up there! We also saw LOTS of Hyraxes (aka Dassies), which are the closest living relative to the elephant, but they are the size of a large rabbit! It was a gorgeous day and we stayed up until the sun set.

Gondola to the top!

The landscape of Table Mountain and surrounding mountains.

View from the top! So beautiful up there!

Adam at the top!

Lion hill, the peak in the front is Lion's Head and the smaller hill in the back is called Signal Hill (but also sometimes Lion's Rump). Robben Island lies in the background, where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years of his life.

Me and Adam overlooking Cape Town (notice the World Cup stadium in the background - I love soccer, but this stadium is ugly and takes away from the landscape).