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This week I am going to introduce you to some of the fierce (and often cute) wild animals that live on our doorstep in Africa. First of all let me introduce RISKKO’s personal trainer called Charlie.

Charlie is training to be a fierce crocodile and so whenever we see him he shows off his press-ups on the rocks near our home.

In my earlier blog article about the Sandy Bay beaches (you can find it here) I described the many rock pools that we have around our local beaches. We are often among the first people to visit the beach in the morning and RISKKO has made friends with the crabs who live here. Below is a picture of one of them called ‘Crusty’.

Here is a picture of some of the rock pools. These are next to Sandy Bay’s smaller beach.

Dogs have very sensitive hearing which means that RISKKO is able to listen to molluscs like clams and mussels. This can be very useful because Molluscs can tell us where to the best pearl oysters live. In the past Sandy Bay was very famous for its pearl oyster beds. In fact there is a story that before the area became famous one of the first settlers in Llandudno came across a beautiful naked girl gathering pearls from around the rocks and caves around Sandy Bay. Apparently this was how it first got its reputation as Cape Town’s unofficial nudist beach. It was probably also the inspiration for the beach scene in Dr No (OK – well perhaps I have used a little artistic license here – but it is nice to think that Sean Connery and Ursula Andress would have prefered to meet here had they been given the choice!)

One day as we were looking for pearl oysters we came across some donuts (or ‘dough nuts’ for the language police). Many readers probably just think of donuts as something you buy in the store or restaurant and that they taste yummy. They do not even stop to consider where donuts actually come from (or more precisely where they grow). Well do not let it be said that this site does not help to educate our global readership. Clearly donuts like most other foods have to grow somewhere. There are lots of donuts living in the rock pools around Sandy Bay and I have captured some of them in the photographs below.

Donuts live in many of the rock pools at Sandy Bay and you occasionally find them growing in rather inconvenient locations as the picture below illustrates. Clearly this rock did not take too nicely to having a donut growing on top of his head. Well I guess at least it could be useful if the rock every gets hungry and fancies a quick snack.

As well as donuts and apprentice crocodiles there are lots of other animals to be found here. Below is one of the local lizards (Lizzy) who likes to play hide and seek with RISKKO.

Seeing Lizzy reminded us of Sally Manda the friendly Salamander who likes to cuddle with RISKKO when he is out walking in the Bavarian forests. If you would like to read more about this the link is here.

Now getting back to Africa (and summer) here is a picture of the wild countryside where RISKKO goes hunting for vicious animals. See if you can spot the little lions head.

Every week we like to share with our readers some of the pretty flowers that we come across during our travels. This week is daisy time. Daisies some times get forgotten but are among the most beautiful flowers you can find. Here are some pictures taken from around Sandy Bay and the little lions head mountain. All of the photographs are taken using high-definition photography so you can see more detail by clicking on the pictures.

I will complete this weeks article with some more pictures of the flowers (see below). I intend to publish some more exotic pictures of local vegetation in future weeks so if you like flowers please pop-by again. Just watch out for any wild animals!

Chris Duggleby.