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Published: January 22nd 2008
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Table Mountain and the Waterfront area Well I am finally off on my little trip, in fact I am on day 3 at the moment. I flew from Heathrow on Saturday night to Cape Town and got picked up from the airport by transfer bus which took me straight to the hostel. The guy in customs asked me if I was travelling alone and I said yes, to which he replied "ooh, big girl hey?"!! My hostel is on Long Street which is the main street with the bars/shops etc in the city centre (original name, its a few kilometres long). There were only 2 of us in my room for the first night and 2 more arrived last night, a girl called Francesca from Melbourne arrived the same day as me. For yesterday and today the two of us bought a 2-day "city sightseeing" bus ticket, you can go on the blue route or the red route which include different stops you can hop on and hop off at over the 2 days. i think we have been round about 5 times in the last 2 days!! Yesterday morning the bus took us around the city centre, then we got off at the table mountain cable
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Table Mtn car and went up right to the top. Amy sent me a message today saying "lynz, hope you didn't get stuck at the top of the cable car, it was on the news!!" And no, I didn't get stuck, altho that was the first thing the bus guide told us this morning, three things in fact - 1.) that the cable car had suffered a power cut late yesterday afternoon and the people couldn't come down until 12:30am!!!!!! 2.) One of the things they suggest for you to do is paraglide off the smaller hill next to table mountain called Lion's Head, and someone died yesterday whilst doing that, and 3.) A german tourist fell off the mountain yesterday and died!
But we didn't encounter any of those situations, just had a fantastic few from all sides at the top, one side looking out over the main city, and the other side looking out over a vast expanse of ocean - the next land mass being antarctica!! We had lunch back in the middle of the city and wandered around the market, then got on the other bus route and stopped off at a small harbour at the back
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Table Mtn from the open top tour bus! (total tourist) of table mountain. Unfortunately the boat trip out to what they call Seal Island wasnt open (don't know why) but there were men in fishing boats in the harbour and about 7 seals just playing around in the water waiting for the fishermen to gut the fish and chuck them the leftovers!! (I will put my photos up tomorrow) Last night we just chilled out in the bar of the hostel, it opens out onto a balcony overlooking the main street which is really lively at night. We had bought fresh prawns at the fishing harbour we'd visited so we had those for dinner.
Today I went to check out some of the beaches this morning that you can also get to on the sightseeing bus, beautiful sand and clear blue water - the only downside is that the water is brought in by currents from the antarctic and is FREEZING!!!! Ranges between 9 and 15 degrees, you think I am over-exaggerating here but once the tide washes over your feet 3 times they begin to go numb - some people were actually swimmimg but I was not that desperate! The surfers all wear wetsuits all the time otherwise they
would just get sick.
This afternoon we went and had a tour around a township round the back of table mountain. It is basically a really poor area of cape town made up of shack houses that the people have built themselves, but in the past 5 years an irishman has plugged a lot of money into reforming the area and building lots of proper houses for these people to live in. Our guide lives in the town and showed us around his home, the local "shops" (basically corrugated iron sheds selling sugar, bread etc), we also went to the library and the primary school.
The weather has been fantastic so far, yesterday was a bit cooler than yesterday, only 33 degrees as opposed to 37 yesterday....!! But quite a strong wind blows in from the coastline which they call the Cape Docter because it blows away all the smog from the city and keeps everyone healthy (and cools you off)
We went to Nando's for dinner this evening (not quite as cool as having prawns fresh from the sea but never mind! we were starving and couldnt be bothered to go and buy something to make).
I
will stay in Cape town till saturday, on friday i am booked to go on a boat trip to the robben island museum, and i think tomorrow or thursday i will go on the train down to the warmer side of the cape of good hope to a place called Simonstown which has a beach called Boulders Beach where you actually swim with the penguins.....!!!!!!!
So everything is going well so far 😊
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