Here’s another image of my favourite city, taken by Canadian astronaut and all round amazing chap, Colonel Chris Hadfield, while he was on the International Space Station.
I had to look at it for a while before I could figure out what part of the city I was looking at. On the left of the image is False Bay, and at the top left of the image you can just see the Strandfontein sewerage ponds that you pass when driving along Baden Powell drive, looking like shiny patches of mercury just inland from the beach. This is a popular bird watching location.
On the right is Table Bay, with the harbour visible at the top right of the image. It’s hard to be dogmatic about it, but from the wind pattern on Table Bay it seems the south easter was blowing when this picture was taken. The mountain protects the inshore sites on the Atlantic seaboard from the wind.
If you draw a line across the top of the image from the harbour to the sewerage ponds, you’re cutting right through the southern suburbs – basically the area between the M3 and M5. The bulk of the bottom of the image is the Cape flats.
If you rotate this map clockwise by 90 degrees, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the orientation of this picture. We’re more familiar with False Bay and Cape Town looking like this or like this!
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