Blogs from KIrstenbosch, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, Africa

After returning to the ship we have a day in Cape Town and plan to go to the botanical gardens at Kirstenbosch. We visited them several years ago but on one of those tours where you have 45 minutes here, a photo opportunity there and feel there was so much you didn’t see. We promised ourselves if we ever had the chance we would return and today is the day. We stop a taxi and he quotes a price. Ian never thinks of haggling and just agrees. The price (while cheaper than a Cunard excursion by some margin) is still much more than we expected. We are driven to the gardens and it is agreed the driver will pick us up later in the day. Ian offers to pay half the fare but the driver waves ... read more

What a perfect day for a garden visit! Clear blue skies and warm temperatures as we head out early to visit the famous Kirstenbosch Gardens the national botanical garden of South Africa. We wanted to get in ahead of the big groups later in the day. And there is the much anticipated visit to the Townships in the afternoon. Kirstenbosch was est. in 1913 after it was left to the nation in 1902 on the death of Cecil John Rhodes - he wanted to protect the slopes of Table Mountain from urban development. Today it is one of the great botanical gardens of the world, it's first curator having trained at Kew Gardens Alison had booked a shuttle (golf) cart buggy with a guide to take us on a one hour tour, and that's the best ... read more

Capetown, South Africa--Wednesday, February 26th. Afternoon tour of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, World Heritage Site. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRISITNA! After lunch we walked with Ann to get her car out of the parking garage. We finished lunch later than we expected and so we were pushing it to get to the gardens by three to be able to get a pre-arranged by Ann golf cart tour. Unfortunately, we were just a bit late due to HEAVY going home traffic. Ann surprised us with tickets she had already purchased and we went inside. It was quickly obvious that I was not going to see much of the gardens as they are planted basically uphill on the side of Table Mountain and the afternoon heat was extremely hot. As we were walking along an aisle of Camphor trees planted in ... read more

We arose fairly early in preparation for our visit to Robben island which was the incarceration centre for some 20 years of all the ANC and PAC freedom fighters including Nelson Mandela. First though, D took a photo from our cabin window across the bow of a French warship which gave us a direct view of Tafelberg. Had we been in a hotel, this view would probably have cost serious money. We went off on our Robben Island (Afrikaans: Robbeneiland) trip at 9.30 am and we were walked round to the Nelson Mandela Centre and given tickets for the 1.00 pm sailing. These showed that the actual price, had we gone under our own steam, was less than a third what we charged for doing the tour and given there was little by way of value ... read more