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Cape Town was never really on my itinerary as it is in the opposite direction of where I want to end up. The reason why I came down was Matt a friend of mine which I met in Sydney a long time ago and which is living here now.
Cape Town is in a stunning location with the ocean on one side the table mountain in the back and some other mountains on the sides. It still contains quite a few old colonial Dutch and English buildings and is quite pleasant to walk around in.
The first day was spent walking around the rater nice city and getting wet followed by a BBQ or Brai as they call it here.
The weekend was rather interesting as we went to the annual South African Ski Club Christmas party. If you never been to South Africa for skiing then keep it that way. The ski club was founded in the early 1900 by a couple of very desperate Austrian Expats. The ski season here is somewhere around 1 month long and I guess the spirit behind it was “I'd rather have something than nothing to ski on”. Anyway that didn't
stop them from building a rather impressive ski hut and ski lift in a private nature reserve which can be either reached by 4WD or foot. We took the second option which meant hiking in beautiful surroundings for 2 hours up a mountain carrying everything we needed. We were desperately in need for a drink when we reached the hut and luckily we packed more than enough alcohol to satisfy any thirst (and kill millions of brain cells).
If you ever get invited to an South African party (Christmas or not) then go. It is mayhem. They really know how to do it.
The “highlight” of the next day was me falling of the roof of a 4WD. No I wasn't drunk I just couldn't hold on anymore as the car was rocking from one side to the other. Nothing serious happened apart from banging a muscle or tendon in my knee. Takes ages to get better so I decided to extend my stay in Cape Town and spend endless hours laying on the sofa watching all of Matts DVD collection.
When I got up I wandered the city and did a trip to Robben Island. Robben Island was
one of the prisons where also political prisoners were kept. The most famous of them was Nelson Mandela which spent 18 years of his 26 (or around there) on this Island. Normally you imagine a prison island to be a bleak place with just a gray looking prison. To my surprise Robben Island has a small very pleasant looking village in which the wardens and their families lived.
The conditions in the early days were not really pleasant as most of the prisoners were forced to do hard labor in quarries. The tour also included a “guided” tour around the prison and the guide was ex political prisoner. He showed us around the cell blocks and told his story from when he was imprisoned here. As with every prison it wasn’t a place you wanted to be…
A trip to Cape Town wouldn’t be complete without visiting the cape of good hope which is nearly the southern most point of Africa. A nice place but it did not have the roaring seas that I expected. Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen a sunny day to come down …
On the way there I passed a few very cute little towns
and one of them contained a 3000 strong penguin colony. Apparently a few years ago a few penguins were released after they were cleaned up after an oil spill and they decided to stay. A few more liked the idea and now the place is full of them. The live in a small nature strip between the last houses and the ocean.
If you ever are in this area of the world then check out Cape Town it's worth having a look at.
Next stop is Maputo in Mozambique
Mat: Thanks again I had a great time.
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