evening hike up to elephant eye (constantia)

It's been rainy here in Cape Town since our return from beautiful Paternoster on Sunday. But we're through another work week, and feeling more settled! Jennifer has started working from a co-working space in Woodstock, a neighborhood just outside the central business district of Cape Town (described by a friend as Brooklyn in the early '80s - it's a little rough around the edges, but the building she's in is very nice). And Jim had parent night at school, and an entertaining middle school student council election in his 6th-grade homeroom. The new student from Spain ended up being the last vote, but his English isn't quite up to snuff to understand the speeches. So Jim had the candidates re-do their speeches in Spanish. One candidate could do so impeccably. The other could not. It ended up in a tie, with a good laugh all around.

To take us back to those sunny days we had a week or two ago, thought we'd post a few pictures from an evening hike we took on a weeknight. The hike starts in what's basically a state park about 10 minutes from our house, up a beautiful pass to a big cave called Elephant's Eye, overlooking the valley we live in.

Jim models our new car - a Volkswagon Citi (or Chico, we aren't really sure which). It's a stick-shift without power steering, and Jim doesn't quite fit in the drivers' seat (which is on the other side of the car from where he's standing), but it's still considered a pretty nice car by teacher standards!

Starting to get a view already after about a 15-minute walk from the car.

Constantia valley below us - we think our house is somewhere in the middle of this picture.

The Indian Ocean is behind Jim; we're looking out over False Bay.

This is looking back north, toward the back side of Table Mountain. You can almost see the other mountain range, across the valley, on the horizon.

Looking out from the cave!

We thought the various plants growing from the ceiling were very cool.

Jim stands in front of the field we'll walk back over.

The sun was setting as we drove back down the hill - we took this from the car!