Cape Town

hello to all,

I must say after Tanzania Cape Town came quite as a surprise but then why so I was in a completely different country just same continent, a bit like North vs South America.
I stayed on the waterfront in Cape Town throughout my week and a half visit and immediately felt like a proper tourist as opposed to a traveller. Wonderful shopping malls, hotels, restaurants the lot really, which made me feel quite out of place. Took me a while to adjust to elite civilisation again!

If anything there's lots to do in Cape Town so I quickly booked tours and trips. My first one was to Hermanus Bay for a bit of whate watching. It was still early in the season and we only managed to see two in the distance. However, the beaches all along the coast are a spectacle.


A different and interesting tour was the wine tasting one. We headed inland and visited beautiful manor houses in the middle of vineyards to taste some gorgeous wines. Oh how my head spun, yep especially sampling wines at 10 in the morning!! Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Praal aren't only renouned for their wines but their quaintness which no wonder attracts loads of retired British.

Third time lucky due to bad weather and choppy seas, I managed to pay a visit to Robben Island. Although there isn't much to see except for long corridors with dormitories (the main prison) I couldn't help wondering what life could be like for a convict. My imagination was even fueled by the recounts of our tour guide, an ex-convict himself for about 10 years. Pity the area where Nelson Mandela lived was closed for restoration. Outside the prison site the rest of the Island is a cute little village with a school, post office and a few residential buildings not to mention the residents; people, antelope and seals.




After the cultural tours I had had to go for a bit of adventure! So off I went out at sea for a shark cage diving experience! I never thought I'd find the guts to stay in that cage for a good 45 minutes while white sharks feasted on chunks of tuna just about a metre infront of my nose! Was an incredible experience, which I have recorded on dvd. The photos show the cage we 'sat' in being dragged to the boat we were on and the other is a photo of a photo; our shark tour leader kissing one of those big cuties!!!


Being in Cape Town I had to visit Cape of Good Hope, of course! It was a long drive but well worth the scenery, to say the least. We first went up to Cape Point by cable car, I would have loved walking the gigantic boulder to the lighthouse but the weather was so unstable; one minute you get blue skies and sun the next clouds and rainstorm. Well, what could you expect being at the Cape! The view from the Point was fantastic. You got to see the different shaded oceans; the Altantic being colder is turquoise in colour while the Indian Ocean is of a deep dark blue. A quick dash along the narrow Diaz trial before a nice shower (!) took us further down and a bit closer to the waters. We next stopped at Cape of Good Hope. I must say not as spetacular however, quite monumental, of course.

Oh, and we visited the colony of tiny penguins on our way back at Boulders Bay...oh so cute!!!

Cape Town is prob one of the few Towns in the world to have a mountain right in the middle of it. This is Table Mountain and not only just over 1000m high, the summit has a surface area of 2.5km. Due to bad weather and despite the unfortunate incidents occuring throughout the week and a half of my stay I got to speed climb it up in about 2.5hrs on my very last day. Our guide took us up a very short but route. We could barely see anything once on top with the thick fog. Hard to believe but the photo shows me on the summit! Our guide made us wait for a few minutes at the top as he felt a bit of wind about to expose the view of the bays below. And what a view we had for just 5 minutes. Well worth it, though. We descended by cable car as there was no time to walk it down...I had to get to the airport that afternoon.



On other days and afternoons I just spent my time walking around the waterfront and along the endless promenades ... wishing it were summer not winter there!
Cape Town was my final African destination before heading back to UK after 2 months :) I must say quite an Out of Africa experience!!!

ta for now
Nicky
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