Greetings from Cape Town!
 

Well, I made it!

Here are a few images from the first day or so.

1. a fisheye view at sunset from our balcony door looking toward's the downtown area and Table Mountain.
2. The Virgin Active Helatclub across the road from our hotel. Is it for Active Virgins or somehow affiliated with the airline????
3. and 4. are long lens view from out hotel at sunset, the harbour and the new stadium being built for the 2010 World Cup matches.

We are off to Robben Island today, the imfamous prison.

We are happy our agent has reached his target safely, and will be able to gather more pictures for further reports to home base. :haha:

Thank you fearless agent.

great photos

The weather looks divine :)

My wife snapped this of me trying to get the sunset with my 800mm lens. Wish she had reminded me to suck in my gut!!!

Why is it that none of you Cellarites matches my mental image of you? Oh, yeah, that's right...I don't know you!!!:p

Gut? Do you mean your tripod stabilizer attachment? ;)

Fantastic!

I take it you are something more than a casual photographer, there, Chris? :D

Keep 'em coming. For my money, living vicariously through the interesting lives of others is the best thing about The Cellar.

Here are some pictures of our funky 4 star hotel room. I really do like it but the furniture and cabinets look they came from the IKEA store or some other Danish shop and there are some very peculular contemporary light fixtures. Anyway here they are for your enjoyment:
1. view of bedroom. We have a nice big comfy bed but a really thick duvee, so we asked for a blanket which is fine. I think duvees are more of a European thing.
2. view of room and bath area
3. Toilet and shower, the walls are all black frosted glass. There is a door but it is open for the pictures
4. Shower for very tall people with faucet control in an out of the way place.

interesting room.

Is that the entrance into the room, right next to the bath tub?

5. Acrylic Sputnik model lamp by bed.
6. Bathtub and mirror for tall people again. Black glass sinks sure don't look good after you brush your teeth!
7. Bar area with uglu print on wall and very mod swag lamp!
8. Close up of way cool lamp; be careful in the dark not to poke you eye out on it!

You can adjust the shower temperature without being under it... that's a plus. Is that a tub in the far corner?

Whoops, yes it's a tub.

No the entrance to the room is to the right of the funky bar lamp.

Are you traveling with that large flatscreen monitor?

That's the TV, isn't it?

Wow, nice room!

I've been known to carry a lot of photo gear but never a monitor! That is the bedroom TV and DVD player.

These are 2 last shots of our room, namely the sitting area complete with TV, armchair, flat panel TV and a lamp that looks like a hair dryer.
3. Hallway that is very dark and with green accent lighting, reminds me of the hallway at the end of the first Matrix movie where Mr. Smith meets his match!
4.Reception area near elevators, like a timewarp fromt he early 60's!

Interesting decor, great photos!

I like the way they ran the flooring up one wall, makes me think of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. :D

It's a really interesting room. I've never seen a layout like that, and the decor is wild.

Room 420 is non-smoking?

As far as I know!

But what about Room 1408?

That's just not right.

The mysterious first floor???

Americans always make floor #1 as the lobby/ground floor but SA is like most European countries and G is Ground. We accidendaly hit the button for #1 and this is what we got... a sheet of plywood. Apparently no one goes to the first floor here...

This morning it was birds... I went to a nearby bird refuge with the big lenses; the 800mm and the 100-400mm. Here are 4 out takes. Not many intersting migratory birds yet, these are mostly stay at home birds.

I'm still really jealous Chris. Thanks for the pics!

I went to the top of Table Mountain today on the cable car. I never did that before and I felt like a real tourist. It was colder then shit up there and really windy, it's about 3050 meters above sea level.

I had no idea it was so spectacular there. Thanks for all the pics!

I ended the day shooting images of the kite boarders up at Blue Dolphin Beach. Very windy!!!

Good night! I'm off to J'Burg tomorrow for 2 days. Report back afterwards!

That sure doesn't look like 3,000 meters - maybe they meant 3,000 feet?

You're rignt, about 3040 feet.

Here's the real news... I got up at 1:30 to pee pee and looked out the window and the mountain was up in flames. Apparently there was a fire somehwere that got out of control and now they've had a huge fire storm that was pretty spectacular to watch. I used my 12 x binoculars and you could see flames going up a few hundred feet in the air. I'm a few miles away and the fire covered a third of the mountain. Glad we got to go up there because now I imagine it will be closed for awhile.

Wow, that must have been quite a sight, hope it didn't singe the cable car.

Waiting with bated breath for your next installment, so please be careful. :D

The Telegraph has a picture.

*Adding another thing to my list of things to do before I die*

from dar's link;So this is a good thing.

For the plants, sure. But I bet those two burned homeless dudes don't think so.

Back in Cape Town from a few days seeing a cousin in Johannesburg. He took me to a small but nice game reserve there where we saw several large Sable, Hippos, Cheetah, Wild Bush Dogs, Wart Hogs, Eland, Bontebok, Springbok, Wildebeast and Heartebeast. HEre are a few processed images. The Sable have the most beautiful large horns that are about 36 inches long.

We saw some wild bush dogs and vultures which are highly endangered. The dogs are in a very large enclosure of several hundred acres and the vultures are fed with local carcasses from nearby farms to keep them healthy and in the area.

Outstanding! Griff needs a couple Sables to confuse his goats. :D

I wouldn't mention the bacon thread to that Wart Hog.

I would love a few of those on my walls. They are so beautiful.

The pictures or the heads?

The Heads. Off with their heads!

Saturday we drove to the Cape of Good Hope, the place of many ship wrecks and rough seas. However yesterday the weather was nice and calm and sunny. 1 and 2 are of the Cape beaches and 3 and 4 are off wind surfers who brave the big waves.

There is a colony of South African Penguins (Aka: Jackass Penguins) near by. They like to lie out in the sun at mid-day after a morning of swiming

Street singing group: They hang out near the parking lot for the penguins and do some singing and dancing to make money from tips. They were pretty good and we gave them 100 rand!

Last post before bed! Beware of the Baboons!!! Even if they look like some kind of antelope.

:D

Wild animal crossing preferred by springboks and baboons.

Chris - my 'rents are wonderful.
BUT.
Fancy adopting me?!

Fantastic pictures, you have a talent there.
More please.

And some really good camera equipment. I am with SG. Keep those pics coming. Very good. Do you have a picture posting website like Picasa?

A few morning shots. Sunrise over Table Mountain is a beautiful thing! The strong warmer winds sweep up from the Indian Ocean and as they go over Table Mountain they meet the colder winds from the Atlantic and beautiful clouds are formed. The result is referred to as "The Table Cloth".

Here are some shots from today's sunrise and just after breakfast. Also one of Lion's Head which is supposed to resemble a lion lying down and looking to the left, the peak is his head and the hill to the right is the rump.

Wow! :notworthy

FTR, a friend of mine grew up in S Africa.
He lived in Scotland as child, but developed an SA accent by the time he moved back.

He had some pics. But nothing like yours.

Yesterday we stopped by the Taal Monument. It is a monument made to the Afrikaans language which is sort of a Africanized Dutch. Beautiful modern style mounument and a beautiful day in Paarl (Pearl) not far from Kaapstad (Cape Town).

Some kind of bird dance ritual thing. I don't know what they were doing but it involved on Sacred Ibis sticking his big beak way down the other bird's throat and then pulling some kind of slime out! Yuck!!!

I was just thinking how that monument would look here, with safety rails, non-skid surfaces, and warning signs. :haha:

I think the Ibis is feeding a juvenile.

Yes I agree, but when my wife saw it said gave a new meaning to "Deep Throat"!

The monument had many curved surfaces and would make a great skate board park!