A sunset at 3 o' clock in the afternoon?

No, not really, as it was a fire on the horizon that cloaked the sky.

A strong wind drove the glow across the bay.

You can imagine how confused we were, as we have never seen this before, especially at 15:00 hours in the afternoon. A sunset so early? Never, and at home I have a gap in the trees that shows me a look at the horizon. So, I took a shot of the "sunset" colors, and called the wife to get into the car, as I wanted to have an open look at the horizon from a high spot. At this point we still didn't realise that it was a fire.

It had been a beautiful, warm and clear sky day, as I even got this shot below of a Jackal Buzzard.

But not to be, as a surprise was waiting for us. Suddenly, the sky started to turn very dark, and a gap between the trees at home showed me that something was seriously wrong.

Right! We were now at the high spot, and I had an open view of the situation on the horizon, even Table Mountain was covered.

Just look at that! The gulls normally pass over much later in the day, but now they were all fleeing.

The sun lit the ocean up as you can see the bright light on the sea.

That low flying crow came over at speed, almost coming over like a messenger, warning that there was a fire from where he came. By now I had figured that it was a fire, and I tried to get a view of the start, but the right-hand side was totally covered with a dark smoke cloud.

The high buildings on the foreshore were all covered with the orange fire clouds, and you can see that the streetlights were on (2 shots below).

Finally, just some more fleeing gulls.

So, the news came through that it was indeed a fire, and a strong wind was responsible for blowing the fire clouds across the bay. The reason why we couldn't see the start of the fire, was that it was behind the Table Mountain about 54 kilometers away from us. Another amazing occurrence was that my wife told me that she smelled smoke. We had a public holiday (Heritage Day) and most of the folks make braais (barbeques) on the day, and as this was the day after I thought that somebody was still having a braai.

In the meantime, it was the fire that she smelled. So yeah, we had a fire sunset with a difference. Lol. We have some very experienced fire fighter crews, and apparently on the day there were also two fires in other areas. The strong wind wasn't helping, but thankfully no one was hurt and the fires were contained. Things can turn funny here very fast, and I keep on reminding people that we are living in the famous Cape of Storms, where nothing is predictable, even the fires.
Such is life.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.

Photos by Zac Smith. No AI and no Photoshop. All-Rights-Reserved.

Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.

Until next time, shalom!