Greetings fellow nature lovers, it's your host and explorer Juescape with another edition of "The Shape of The Cape".
Today's conditions were somewhat overcast, creating a subdued lighting effect across the landscape and seascape. As a result the mood captured in my photographs here showed a more pensive and contemplative ambience.
Starting early in the morning before the crowds arrived, I was able to access some of the rough and rugged rock features that protrude from the Robberg Peninsula, as it is called here at the marine sanctuary and nature reserve on the South Cape coast of Africa, in the region known as the Garden Route.
Of the five or so diverse global Floral Kingdoms which make up our planet, this particular region of the Cape is unique. Not only is it the smallest of the large geographic regions, with their unique Flora and plant life, but it is also perhaps the most prolific.
In other words, this region has the most diverse species, on par with the forests of Indonesia and the Amazon jungle in its vast diversity of unique species and sub-species of plant life.
This Cape coastal region, known as The Fynbos Floral Region, hosts thousands of different plant species, many of which are rare or endangered, and all of which are endemic to this region or found nowhere else on the entire planet. This is due to the unique climatic conditions generated by the meeting of two great oceans along this shoreline, namely the Indian and the Atlantic.
And these "Fynbos" plant species grow spontaneously all along this shoreline. They cover the sandy dunes on the beach and also emerge from the rocky peninsula that juts out into the ocean. I feel as if I am exploring some distant planet across the universe when I make my way amongst these small strange rare exotic plant species. They seem prehistoric and look quite ancient as they sprout magically from the solid rock or from a small crevices where hardly any soil exists, and yet still the plants cling to the rock and sometimes grow out of the rock face at right angles, as if defying the laws of gravity. It truly is a magical wonderland freely available to any explorer who wishes to enter and discover the ancient mysteries lying at their feet.
Today I came across a newly established shark bite emergency kit, if you can imagine such a thing. This is due to the rare occasional shark attacks which happen in these very waters just a few meters from where I stand. Over the past three or four years at least two people have lost their lives due to being bitten by sharks while swimming just behind the breakers.
It's a sorry state because apparently sharks don't really care to eat human flesh. They simply mistake any dark floating or swimming creature for a seal of which many proliferate these waters around this peninsula, which is their home as a seal colony and breeding ground. Even excellent swimmers in their full body wetsuits have been known to be attacked by some unsuspecting and fairly massive great white shark, which may also call this bay home.
As a result, there are life guards most of the time, though not always during the off season. Therefore, now a handy emergency shark bite kit has been installed on this more remote end of Robberg beach, which stretches for about 4.5 kilometers from end to end.
In this way we're reminded that nature is "red in tooth and claw" as the poet says. Despite the stunning beauty and inspiring scene created by the temperate natural conditions and geographic features here, still there is also the dark side or some more brutal aspect of nature, which includes of course not only harmony and beauty and good health, but also savage brutality and violence, driven by the instinct to survive, which is there within every creature - within every one of us here on our beautiful planet.
One can never deny the fact that nature is blind and operates purely istinctively and automatically for overall long-term survival of life in its diverse species, regardless of the fact that most of life survives on death.
For most creatures to survive, others have to die to feed them. This is the sometimes harsh reality of what it means to take birth on this planet, where one living entity is food for another. For Life to thrive, it seems that there also has to be death.
There's no escaping it in the animal kingdom. Also sometimes nature is bountiful in rain and shine, yet another time she his merciless in drought and natural destruction. Nature has no thought or feeling for those who may live or die in her wake. She simply operates as if programmed by an original developer or coder, and then left to run like a smart contract on automatic pilot without the need for any personal administration or micro-management.
Such is the delicate balance between creation and destruction or life and death that the stoic observer comes to realize by simply taking note of what happens throughout all the species on our planet, including our own. As a result it can be an inspiring catalyst to see or hear about death so close at hand or to know that potential death lurks unseen just offshore beneath these very waters just a few meters from where I stroll on this calm and pleasant white sandy beach.
Predators will always be there wherever we may roam and so life on Earth could be seen has having danger at every step, and for some it's a hard struggle for existence, despite the sometimes soft and beautiful conditions in which we may find ourselves. Therefore I can never stop appreciating the life affirming beauty every single day.
Photos my own. Written and published from my mobile device onto the Hive blockchain.