Traveling on the Flying Dutchman Funicular railway,

I could see the seabirds whirling and diving

Between the rocky nests and the sea.

The wave -swept pristine beach

Was being explored by hikers

Who admired the sandstone pillars,

Sea caves and white sands

Sculptured and swept clean by the wind and storm.

 

Though the treacherous rocky reefs

Surrounding the Cape of Good Hope

Are home for twenty-six recorded shipwrecks,

The famous one being ‘Flying Dutchman’,

Yet, it is the most breathtaking ocean

As coastal scenery in the world.

Defying imagination and credibility,

No human term can describe it.

 

I looked at the interplay

Of ocean, land and wind

Off the tip of beautiful Africa,

And thought of Coleridge;s Ancient Mariner

And Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Old man and the sea’

Who faced the sea as friend, not foe.

 

Sir Francis Drake, on his famous

Round the world voyage

Sailed into Cape Town’s Table Bay

As he described the Cape Peninsula as

‘The fairest Cape we saw

In the whole circumference of the earth.’

Vasco da Gama did feel the cold waters

Of the Atlantic ocean on the west

And the warmer waters of the Indian ocean

Of the East meeting and wooing,

For no other place can hold such a grand meeting,

The meeting of two vast oceans

Washing the shores of lovely countries

With variegated features and cultures.

 

And finally after visiting

The Penguin colony of Boulders,

We landed in Groot Constantin Wine Estate

Where we tasted the finest wines

The world can produce.

While we drank the wine,

The unique characteristics of the shoreline,

Continental shelf, ocean currents

And gale force winds

Were creating  rogue waves, dangerous

And yet so powerful in beauty.

 

pramila khadun