I killed a man in a streetfight in Hoxton, and thought it best to get out of the UK for a while.

This is dawn breaking somewhere over Africa.

Behind my father's farm in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape.
Up until recently these hills were dotted with stands of majestic eucalyptus, but a campaign to eradicate these thirsty alien trees has returned the landscape to something more like its natural appearance.

This is the shortcut to and from town. 

Often the clouds roll in low off the Indian Ocean, smothering the hills.

Tarzan

A typical evening at Waterloo Farm.
Clockwise from left: Beethoven, Fat cat, Momma cat, Tracy. Absent: Muldoon, Tarzan and Baby cat.

Waterloo Farm, built in 1835 by a man named George Beadle who'd fought in that battle.
The townships of Grahamstown are seen beyond.

The Featherstone family once farmed in the next valley over, but all that remains of their life here is a few English oak trees and a dry stone wall.

The valley is now empty and wild. Baboons were shouting up at me as I took this picture: a hoarse, ragged bark. 

Canadian climbers have to build wooden 'bouldering caves' in their basements, on which to train over the winter. I've found myself a real cave just uphill from the farmhouse. It just needed a bit of brush cleared from the base and now sports a burly traverse and all manner of lines leading to the top.

It was obviously once an occasional home for the San (aka 'bushmen') who used to inhabit the Eastern Cape. They painted figures and animals on a few of the blank planes of the quartzite.

And left their tiny handprints.

I do take care to avoid touching the paintings when I climb.

I'm designing a garden flat for this spot, behind an old cottage in central Grahamstown.

An abandoned farm outside of Grahamstown.
The tall block at left has thin firing slots on the back for rifles, a reminder of a distant time when white people lived in fear of Xhosa raiding parties.

That hasn't changed. Most people here still live behind bars and barricades and barbed wire.

Waterloo Farm being a rare exception. A well-placed kick would get you through its flimsy old front door.

On the gate of a game reserve near Grahamstown.

The African way involves trained tigers.

In East London, a city on the coast nearby.

East Beach at East London. This short section is the only spot overseen by lifeguards.

School had just let out for the weekend.

Monte Vista, a 'Boerewors Belt' suburb of Cape Town(boerwors is a traditional sausage and a staple of the Afrikaans diet).
My cousin Wendy lives here, but she barely speaks a word of Afrikaans.

While I was staying with her I spent my days travelling into the centre on the trains which constitute the city's rudimentary public transit network.

This is Cape Town's main train station.

Returning to Monte Vista one evening. That thing in the centre is a cell phone tower, cunningly disguised as a Norfolk Island Pine.

A Japanese trawler getting a fresh coat of paint in the Cape Town docks.

That's the same ship on the left, with Table Mountain beyond.

The summit plateau of Table Mountain, following a grueling hike up Skeleton Gorge above Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens on the opposite side.

The view from above downtown looking south towards Cape Point, a site probably best known for featuring on the labels of 'Two Oceans' wine.

Heading east out of Cape Town. That is snow on the mountains.

I went along on a 12-day excursion of the IAVS, the International Association of Vegetation Scientists.
I had no connection with this group apart from the fact that my father was leading the tour and wrangled me an extra spot.

Vineyards east of Cape Town.

Beyond those mountains, the 'Little Karoo' area of semi-desert.

A farm in the Swartberg.
Why yes, those tiny black specks are ostrich.

The Swartberg Pass
This place is awesome.

Finally down at the bottom of the pass.
See what I mean?

Walking back up the pass,  on the following afternoon.

Of course, this being South Africa, suffering and pain dwell here too. The road through the pass was built by the slave labour of prisoners during one or another of those wars in the 19th century.

The artsy little town of Prince Albert lies just beyond the pass.

Tailights fade into the gathering Karoo night.

Dorothee, one of the tour participants from Germany, in the Karoo just outside of Prince Albert.

This is a San grave.
Stone tools were scattered around, and nearby I found the handle of a fired-clay pot.

Moriespoort, a pass that took us back south towards the coast.

The sea just along the coast from Nature's Valley, on the edge of Tsitsikama National Park.
I didn't know it yet, but the stinking carcass of a shark is in that cove on the right.

On the beach at Nature's Valley.

A waterhole in Addo National Park in the Eastern Cape.

Addo National Park

Don't worry! These lions are behind glass, and they're stuffed, in the East London Museum.
 

For Your Happiness: on a railway underpass in East London.

Fliers like this are all over South African cities, but this is the only outfit I've seen generous enough to even offer free cleaning.

And I'd hate to think what an abortion would be like that took longer than one day.

I came across this droopy, dejected-looking flower in the valley behind Waterloo Farm.

This is how it looks from below, when you're lying there, sprawled out on the ground, looking up at the sky.

Sunset over the Eastern Cape.