Downtown Stellenbosch

With perfect weather and a quiet Sunday to myself, I took a walk (and this time remembered my camera!) through downtown Stellenbosch, the more historical and touristy side. It was really nice to have some time to look at the old buildings and window shop. Also, during the trip, I walked through the univeristy's botanical garden which was really nice.

 Along Dorp street, this is the Theology department for the university. Definitely one of my favorite buildings so far, it's so grand and pretty. The gardens around it are also quite nice.

I'm not sure if this is the oldest building in Stellenbosch, but it has to be one of them. The date on the roof, although you can't see in this photo is 1779. I believe it's the rector's house and is attached to the main church in town. It's a good example of the Cape Dutch architecture with the white and green with the peaked front.

Walking down Kerk (Church) Street, this is also a good example of traditional homes in the Cape. The historical green and white colour and the wide front porch, plus the tin roof make it perfect. Driving through small towns in the Western Cape, you see lots of houses that look like this. Oh and the bricks in front are because they are repairing the sidewalks all over town!

And finally, a shot down Kerk street to show just how "Africa" Stellenbosch is. As you can see, not very much. Up ahead, the next cafe on the right at the corner of Kerk and Andriga streets is Java, my favourite cafe of the moment. Andriga street runs right up into the heart of the university and it also has several amazing restaurants and shops. But after my walk in the Botanical Gardens plus the heart of the sun, a stop at Java was exactly what I needed!

Yzerfontein

I'm starting to see a trend in some of the places I go to and photograph the most - white, sandy beaches! Continuing this theme, a few weekends ago (Sept. 3rd) I went with a good friend who has family in Yzerfontein. Yzerfontein (pronounced eh-zer-fon-taine) is a small town on the west coast of South Africa (so Atlantic Ocean) a few hours from Cape Town. It's pretty close to West Coast National Park and Langebaan which I visited back in February.

It was a really nice weekend and Yzerfontein is now probably one of my favorite places I have been!

As mentioned above, you can see the beautiful beach of Yzerfontein that goes on and on all the way south to the northern suburbs of Cape Town. Although it was Saturday, the beach was pretty much dead quiet. Out to sea to the right in this photo is Dassen Island which is a small island nature reserve. The island is off limits as it's key sea bird breeding ground. There were lots of birds in Yzerfontein including some beautiful cormorant-looking ones. I definitely need to learn more about South African birds!

Along with the feathered folk are those of a scaled variety. Walking down the beach, we saw several tortoises which were scurrying along. They move somewhat faster than I would have expected. This one was quite happy to wander in front of my feet for a bit.

But this was the biggest surprise! We found this seal lying quite above the tide line and were worried he was dead (it does happen on occasion that a seal will die and then drift up on shore). But actually, he was just napping! I managed to get a cool photo of me standing literally a few feet away from the sleeping pup, but our voices woke him. He was quite annoyed and glared at us before flopping to the sea.

Here he is glaring at us before he decides to waddle into the waves. I've never been so close to a seal in my life...and he dove into the waves with such grace. It was really incredible.

But I think the thing that amazed me the most was how quiet and still Yzerfontein was. We walked through the town and along the beach for hours and saw maybe 5 people. Many of the homes here are vacation homes owned by families out of Cape Town who come for a few weekends here or there. There are very few full time residents. It was almost eerie sometimes walking past all these empty houses. My friend assured me though that it gets quite busy during the summer months when the water warms up a bit. Nevertheless, it was a stunning place and an extremely restful weekend!