Fynbos

The Cape Floral Region is a floristic region located near the southern tip of South Africa. It is the only floristic region of the Cape Floristic Kingdom, and includes only one floristic province, known as the Cape Floristic Province. The Cape Floristic Region, the smallest of the six recognised floral kingdoms of the world, is an area of extraordinarily high diversity and endemism, and is home to over 9,000 vascular plant species, of which 69 percent are endemic. Much of this diversity is associated with the fynbos biome, a Mediterranean-type, fire-prone shrubland. The economical worth of fynbos biodiversity, based on harvests of fynbos products (e.g. wildflowers) and eco-tourism, is estimated to be in the region of R77 million (~US$5 million) a year. Thus, it is clear that the Cape Floristic Region has both economic and intrinsic biological value as a biodiversity hotspot.

Ocean View, Cape Town, was established in 1968 as a township for coloured people who had been forcibly removed from so called "white areas" such as Simon's Town, Noordhoek, Red Hill, Glencairn by the apartheid government under the Group Areas Act. It was first called Slangkop, and the first resident moved there on 1 August 1968. It was renamed Ocean View, although the government had removed the residents from their previous seaside homes and views. As a result, its history is embedded in apartheid, and there is still bitter resentment among many people there.It is located between the community of Kommetjie to its west and Imhof's Gift and Masiphumelele to its east.

Da Gama Park is a suburb of the City of Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa.Da Gama Park was founded as a township in the former Simon's Town district, north-west of the town. Situated in the Else River Valley, it was established for men of the Navy and their families. It was named after Vasco da Gama (?-1524), the Portuguese navigator.

De Oude Weg is a small residential area of Cape Town on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, situated between Kommetjie, Fish Hoek and Capri Village. It is in the suburb of Sunnydale and is situated midway between Kommetjie and Fish Hoek. Translated from Dutch, "de oude weg" means "the old road" which refers to the old dirt wagon track which, in bye gone days, passed through there. The residential area is part of Sunnydale’s first land grant to Carel George Wieser in 1743. Some of the roads in de Oude Weg are named after subsequent landowners. The de Stadler family, who did mixed farming, had ownership as early as 1864. Thereafter, three sisters namely Thelma Wood, Leonora Triggs and Olga Lock (all nee de Stadler) had ownership of the land until they sold to a poultry farmer (Hillside Poultry Farm), individual landowners and finally developers. The Booysen family have strong ties to the area, as they worked the land for many generations. Some of the properties have magnificent views of the Noordhoek Valley. The Kommetjie Road Fire Station is a good landmark to watch out for when looking for this quaint residential area.

Scarborough is a seaside town situated within the City of Cape Town on the Cape Peninsula in the Western Cape province of South Africa, situated at the edge of the Cape Point Nature Reserve. The town's boundary includes Scarborough Beach, which is popular with surfers.This town was designated as a conservation village in April 1996, defined as "a residential area of limited extent, surrounded by a conserved natural landscape, committed to reverse past environmental damage and to avoid future environmental impacts".

Capri Village is a small suburb forming part of the greater area of Noordhoek on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, situated between Kommetjie, De Oude Weg, Fish Hoek and Noordhoek.

Masiphumelele High School is a publicly owned secondary school (grades 8–12) in Masiphumelele in the Western Cape region of South Africa. As of 2005 it had some 942 students. The school has piped indoor water. In February 2006 students of the school were involved in violent protests, which resulted injuries to two teachers and damage to three police vehicles. [1]

Sunnydale is a suburb in Cape Town, South Africa. According to the 2011 census, Sunnydale had a population of 7,012.

The Fish Hoek Valley is situated in the Cape Peninsula, eighteen miles south of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the town of Fish Hoek on the False Bay coast. The valley is bound by mountains (including Chapman's Peak, Spitskop, Silvermine Mountain, and Ridge Peak) on the north; Fish Hoek Bay and False Bay on the east; mountains (including Elsie's Peak, Rooikrans, and Slangkop) on the south; and Chapman's Bay and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. It is 13 kilometres from west to east, and between 3 and 6 kilometres from north to south. The valley has several rivers and lakes. The predominant vegetation type in this valley is endangered Hangklip Sand Fynbos. However, the sides of the valley are home to Cape Granite Fynbos, and Peninsula Sandstone Fynbos can be found higher up on the surrounding mountains. The latter two vegetation types (also both endangered) are endemic to the Cape Peninsula and can be found nowhere else in the world.Fish Hoek Valley was once rural, but today it is largely covered by suburbs and townships such as Kommetjie, Ocean View, Noordhoek, The Lakes, Masiphumelele, Capri Village, Sunnydale, Sun Valley, Fish Hoek, and Clovelly. Some rural aspects have been preserved in the form of heritage areas and parts of the Table Mountain National Park.

The Cape Peninsula (Afrikaans: Kaapse Skiereiland) is a generally mountainous peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the African continent. At the southern end of the peninsula are Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. On the northern end is Table Mountain, overlooking Table Bay and the city bowl of Cape Town, South Africa. The peninsula is 52 km long from Mouille point in the north to Cape Point in the south. The Peninsula has been an island on and off for the past 5 million years, as sea levels fell and rose with the ice age and interglacial global warming cycles of, particularly, the Pleistocene. The last time that the Peninsula was an island was about 1.5 million years ago. Soon afterwards it was joined to the mainland by the emergence from the sea of the sandy area now known as the Cape Flats. The towns and villages of the Cape Peninsula and Cape Flats, and the undeveloped land of the rest of the peninsula now form part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The Cape Peninsula is bounded to the north by Table Bay, to the west by the open Atlantic Ocean, and to the east by False Bay in the south and the Cape Flats in the north. The peninsula is mostly the mountainous remnant of very old durable sandstone formations with low dip, deposited unconformably on an ancient underlying granite peneplain. The climate is of the Mediterranean type, with predominantly winter rainfall and mild temperatures, and the natural vegetation is exceptionally diverse, with an unusually large number of endemic plant species for an area of this size, many of which are endangered, and threatened by human activity and encroachment, but are to some extent protected on the large part of the peninsula which is in the Table Mountain National Park. The coastal waters include a major seaport in Table Bay, and a marine protected area in the two adjacent but significantly different marine ecoregions, which meet at Cape Point. Most of the lower lying coastal land of the central and northern peninsula has been developed as first agricultural, and later urban areas. The rocky uplands have historically avoided development because of difficult access, poor soils and steep slopes, and more recently have been legally protected as being of high ecological importance, but are threatened by illegal land invasion and informal settlement.

Masiphumelele is a township on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, situated between Kommetjie, Capri Village and Noordhoek. Initially known as Site 5, the township was renamed Masiphumelele by its residents, which is a Xhosa word meaning "let us succeed". About 400-500 people first settled in the area in the 1980s. During apartheid residents were continually removed to the suburb of Khayelitsha, over 30 km away, but the numbers began to grow as apartheid began to unravel from 1990. In 1990, about 8000 residents lived in the area, mostly in shacks, but by 2005, over 26000 people lived there, many in brick homes. In 2010, the population was estimated at 38000. Many are from the old Ciskei bantustan in the Eastern Cape. Amenities are scarce, with an overcrowded school, no police station, and an understaffed day clinic, while it's estimated that 30-40% of the community are infected with HIV and/or TB. SHAWCO, the University of Cape Town Student's Health And Welfare Centres Organisation, runs weekly supplementary clinics from the Masiphumelele clinic.

Kommetjie (Afrikaans for "small basin," approximately pronounced cawma-key) is a small town near Cape Town, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It lies about halfway down the west coast of the Cape Peninsula, at the southern end of the long wide beach that runs northwards towards Chapman's Peak and Noordhoek. The community of Ocean View is located to its immediate south east. It was founded in 1902 when a consortium of businessmen developed the area as a residential suburb of Cape Town. The town was modernised in the 1960s when electricity and municipal running water was installed.The area is a popular spot for surfing, since powerful waves from the Atlantic Ocean rise up over rocky reefs formed by hard sandstones of the Table Mountain Group. Wherever the bottom is rocky, the shallower waters are thick with giant kelp forests. Kommetjie is famous for its excellent crayfishing although changes in fishing quotas which have drastically reduced the daily catch allowed.