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Published: September 11th 2023
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We left London in 33 degree heat, packing our sweaters in the cases as it was far too hot to wear them. 11 hours later we arrived in Cape Town to find it was 13 degrees with pouring rain and a howling gale. Hmm, aren’t you meant to go on holiday for better weather…..?
The rain subsided enough to allow us to don sweaters and waterproof jackets and go for a walk round the V&A waterfront. Back in the hotel, we celebrated our 40
th wedding anniversary with a beer in the hotel bar, watching the locals celebrate South Africa thrashing Scotland in their first match of the rugby World Cup, and had an early dinner before heading to bed to catch up on sleep after our night flight.
Next morning we’d booked to visit Robben Island but had an email to say all trips that day were cancelled due to poor weather. High winds on a 30-45 minute boat ride would not have been fun, we told ourselves as we replanned the day. Cape Town is devoid of any decent public transport and for the first time ever we booked a hop on hop off city bus ride, getting
off in the city centre. We visited the District Six museum, which covers the story of how the local, mostly coloured inhabitants were forcibly relocated in the sixties to make way for white people to live there as it had been declared a “whites only” area and for modern redevelopment, before they gradually moved back in following the end of apartheid. We then viewed the original Castle of Good Hope built by the Dutch but it looked boring, so we walked on to visit the Company’s Garden. This was first planted by the Dutch East India Company in the 17
th century as a vegetable garden to resupply their ships, but now has ornamental flowers and trees. It’s overlooked by the Houses of Parliament. Having enjoyed sunshine to this point, we were dismayed to be hit by a sudden violent hailstorm, but mercifully it stopped as quickly as it started.
Back on the bus we headed to Table Mountain. We found a spot on the cable car by an open window, thinking we could take photos, only to find the cable car had a revolving floor. It was an odd and strangely nauseous sensation to be climbing and turning at
the same time. Up at the top you are at nearly 3,500ft and it was dramatically colder but clear, and the clouds were moving in, so we postponed lunch in favour of looking at the views and taking some photos. By the time we’d found a table in the café it was snowing! The saying that you get all four seasons in one day in Cape Town was proving absolutely true. After lunch it was dry and sunny again, and the views were stunning, albeit it was so cold our fingers were numb and the wind was howling.
We were lucky to catch the tour bus just as it was about to leave, and spent the next 45 minutes in the sunshine driving down to Camps Bay and then round the western coastline and back up north to Cape Town. There are beautiful beaches and rocky sections but all along the breakers crash into the coast. This coastline has the most expensive real estate in the city, especially on beaches that are ‘wind free’ where some apartment blocks are built ten storeys down the cliff from the road to the ocean below. We were amused to drive the past
the remains of one sea lido where men would swim naked. One outraged upper class lady complained to the local newspaper that if she stood on her kitchen table she could observe naked men “frolicking in a most unwholesome manner”.
We rounded the day off with a meal out at Pier, a fantastic restaurant on the V&A Waterfront, to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The set menu comprised 11 amazingly imaginative and tasty courses for about £75, with lots of theatre around the presentation and a great view of the waterfront.
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