Mea Lashbrooke will lead Members of Princess Vlei Forum and interested walkers on a guided walk to the Elephant’s Eye Cave on Sunday 14th October 2012.

Elephants Eye Cave

Meet at: Silvermine Dam Car Park, 3km inside the reserve, at 8am. (Wildcard or Entrance Fee necessary).

Difficulty: Medium.
Time: 2.5 hrs (includes medium-paced walk both ways and 30 mins in cave).
Bring: water, snack and swimming things to swim in Dam afterwards.
Please note: Mea is not a registered guide but is happy to show you the way.
Information: 074 101 1927. If the weather is doubtful (we can’t walk if it is cloudy) please phone on the day, any time after 6 am.

Looking out from the cave you can see Princess Vlei

The Legend of princess Vlei

There are several versions of the legend of Princess Vlei and Little Princess Vlei – passed down orally by slaves at the Cape. The mountain backdrop to the vleis is Constantiaberg, but some locals know it as Prinseskasteel, for the Princess is said to have lived in the cave near the top. (Mostly people today call the cave Elephant’s Eye because the mountain resembles a sleeping elephant.) Two streams – Prinseskasteelrivier and Prinskasteelrivier -flow from the mountain to the wetlands.
At the time when Europeans first dropped anchor at the Cape a woman who bathed in her Vlei on the Flats – a cowherd perhaps, a lone Khoi or San woman – suffered at the hands of a hunter or sailor. The atrocity is variously told – violation, murder, abduction. The woman’s tears were unstoppable and thus Little Princess Vlei was formed. The significance of her story within the history of the First People of South Africa, who were brutally targeted by European invaders and as time went on were continually marginalised by modern and post-modern society, has lent this woman status. She is without doubt a ‘princess’, for she represents the dignity of a people, that which is sacred within all of us. And although research into Bushman and Khoi culture indicates that neither Khoi nor Bushman recognised a hierarchy that included a princess (the Bushman scarcely knowing hierarchy and the Khoi practising paternalism) hers is a legend symbolic of degradation, disempowerment and injustice visited on a people who lived in tune with their environment.
The importance of legends is that they are based on truth but are not the factual version of the stories. There need be no definitive version, because the legend tells a collective and universal story. However, mid-twentieth century author Jose Berman attempted to marry fact and legend in a story set in 1510. There is a skirmish between the crew of Francisco d’Almeida’s vessel that was anchored at Table Bay on a return voyage to Lisbon, and the Gorachoqua Khoi at Princess Vlei. A princess bathing at the Vlei is abducted. Although an attack on a Khoi settlement by d’Almeida and his men is recorded, it is known to have taken place near the river at what would be the suburb of Observatory today, not as far inland as Princess Vlei. After some fifty of their people had been killed, the Khoi gave chase, killing more than sixty Portuguese on the beach at Table Bay, including d’Almeida.