Cape Town from Tafelberg Road

I dropped the Frenchman on Tafelberg (Table Mountain) Road on a warm December afternoon, so that he could do a trail run, whee, whee, whee, all the around Devil's Peak, above Rhodes Memorial, down through Newlands Forest and into Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, where I picked him up about two hours after drop off.

The view I snapped from the window of the car is of the city bowl (on the slopes) and city center, that part of Cape Town where the Dutch decided to put down their five-pointed stone fort and their garden to re-supply scurvied European sailors rounding Africa on their way to and from the East Indies, in the second half of the 17th century.

If you like historical fiction, Dan Sleigh's book Islands (translated from the Afrikaans Eilande) explains it all far better than I can, told from all points of view. It's a South African War and Peace.