The day of the local municipal elections – Wednesday, 18 May 2011 – was declared a public holiday. Having done our civic duty even before breakfast by having our thumbnails marked with ultraviolet ink (to prevent double-voting) and casting our ballots at the local town hall, we took advantage of the fabulous weather to head on down to Green Point Urban Park.
About a year ago, Blew-girl – surely the most beautiful border collie in the world – had shown us all around ‘her’ Park, which was still under construction at the time. Have a look here. Since then, we have walked around the Park on a couple of occasions (lots of photos can be found here), and each time, there was something new to see. We were curious: What would be waiting for us this time?
We duly met up with Mom and our two friends, V and L, with their tiny baby daughter N, and parked our cars at the Green Point lighthouse end of the park, otherwise known as the West Gate.
Green Point lighthouse with its distinctive red-and-white paintwork
Weighed down with picnic paraphernalia and pushing along N’s pram, we ambled peacefully down the broad central thoroughfare, past a pond with a magnificent water wheel, water lilies and a flock of squabbling gulls.
A large water wheel in the pond
Turning off onto a side-path, we found ourselves a spot at one of the wooden tables and benches, and unpacked our picnic. As it also happened to be the Birthday of Someone Very Special ;-), we had brought along an absolutely scrumptious chocolate cake in celebration.
A delectably scrumptious birthday chocolate cake
After polishing off most of the cake and all of the tea, we figured that it would be wise to work off some of the excess calories and sugar by continuing our exploration of the Park, and investigating the new exercise equipment at the Green Gym. The tricky part was getting a chance to try out the different machines, because these had proved a definite hit with the kids, who really gave the equipment – and themselves – a thorough workout. I guess we’ll need to come back when the kids are all at school!
Welcome to the Green Gym Exercise Circuit
We also showed L and V the Biodiversity Garden, which we’d enjoyed so much the last time. It really is a special place, particularly if you are curious about indigenous plants and learning about ecosystems and quite a bit about our local South African history too! I found the wire sculptures, with plants growing over and on them, most intriguing.
A wire sculpture of a little lamb - can you see it?
This is such a beautiful environment, that we’ll definitely have to come back to explore it a bit more.
Grains of Sand 
Hi Reggie,
I’m impressed that you could take a cake on a picnic and have it arrive in one piece!
When we were in Cape Town in March we met a relative at that Lighthouse and he took us for a walk in the park. We were most impressed with the place. I liked the little signs for the school groups.
I’d have included a photo (to prove we were there) but I don’t know how to place a photo in a comment…
Well, the icing on one side of the chocolate cake *was* a little squished, but that certainly does not detract from its taste, so no harm done! 😉
Aah! So you also visited the Park! I too love the signs and the little figures hidden among the flowers and the bushes… like a treasure hunt.
I *think* there’s a way of inserting a photo in a comment – because on the ‘html’ version of the comment there is a code for IMG, but I’ve no idea how to use it either. Perhaps WordPress’ help section could offer some suggestions?
I was also really impressed with the park when we visited. The City of Cape Town deserves praise. I keep wishing we could establish something like this in other Cape Town suburbs too. It is such a wonderful learning experience for kids and must be a pleasure for flat dwellers with no gardens.
I echo all of that, Indigigirl. I just hope that the park will continue to be maintained and looked after, and that it is not allowed to become run-down. It’s a great place to come with the kids; they can get rid of all their excess energy on the exercise gyms, while mommy and daddy and grandparents have a relaxing picnic next to the pond. 😉 My particular favourite is the educational biodiversity garden.
Happy belated birthday to that “someone special”! Also, interesting about the inked thumbnails–we don’t do that here in the states. Looks like a nice time in the park.
😀 Thank you, Kathy, I shall pass it on.
Happy birtday to “SVS” 😉 – Regarding your problems with WordPress – I’ve also had problems with saving drafts and publishing them at a later date – most recently when I was on holiday at Jutland’s west coast and would have published my last post about “Sculpture by the Sea” while I there was … But it was not published before I got home again!
Thanks, Truels – I have passed on your kind birthday wishes to SVS. 😉
Isn’t it frustrating when one has spent so much time, attention and energy on preparing a draft post, and then having problems right at the end? We have a relatively slow internet connection by European and American standards, so it’s already quite time-consuming and fiddly to finalise things like captions etc. without encountering publishing problems.
I did end up contacting WordPress, who suggested I update to the latest Mozilla/Firefox (I had done so already) and to clear my cache (hadn’t tried that). If I have the same problems again, I’ll try the cache-clearing approach. I hope your scheduled posting works, Truels! I have never tried to schedule my posts for a future date/time, though I see it is possible.