Return to the Cape Peninsula


I drove from Cape Town to the Cape of Good Hope last Monday, something I hadn’t done in fifteen years. The spectacular scenery is produced by erosion of Ordovician sedimentary rocks of the Table Mountain Group, lying above the Cambrian Cape Granite.


At the cape, the cormorants nest on ledges in the Peninsula Formation which shows dipping surfaces recording the passage of subaqueous dunes.

Let's zoom in on that cormorant:



To the North at Boulder Beach the penguins dry themselves on rounded outcrops of the Cape Granite.


My father passed this way 70 years ago, in a ship on the way to Burma. Here is his sketch of the view.

I remember the "dassies" (Procavia capensis) at the top of Table Mountain and it was fun to see them again at the Cape of Good Hope.


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