I am in Cape Town South Africa today, at Simon’s Bay. We are going to stay here for the next couple of days but the other day we went to explore one of the neighbouring countries. We saw so little, I had nothing to report.
On some of our days we visited a village called Paarl. It is situated between thirty and forty miles to the North East of Cape Town.
After leaving the neighbourhood, where there were white houses as if picked out of a street, we had to cross a wide level of sandy flats. The sands stood in depth of forty feet. We then crossed a low undulating country, thinly clothed with a slight green vegetation. Even though it is not yet flowering season, there are some very pretty Ox-daises and Chrysanthemums, and on the sandy spots, there were also beautiful little birds. Sometimes, if we can not find anything else to do apart from observing the animals and plants, there is very little to do.
During my time in Cape Town, I have visited the astronomer, the mathematician and the chemist, John Herschel, who arrived in 1834 to carry out a survey. We are leaving Cape Town soon, when the seas are less rough. Hopefully we will discover as much as did he.
By Gemma