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Published: September 1st 2008
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Penguins
at boulders beach, waddle waddle Touchdown in the Mother City
Breakfast, packing and checking out was leisurely, and we hit the road with the aid of Berk, who knew how to find our next planned destination, Cape Point. Cape Point is the southernmost tip of the Table Mountain Peninsula - not the southernmost tip of Africa, or even where Indian and African oceans meet (as lots of tour blurb says) - but is where two ocean currents meet, and gives a spectacular viewpoint over the seascape and Cape of Good Hope.
The drive ended up being fairly long, although we took in a number of sights on the way. These were most notably the townships (‘informal settlements’) around Cape Flats (illustrating a lot of colourful spirit in the face of poverty), and the African Penguin colony at Boulder Beach. These little fellows were very endearing to watch as they waddled about, vacillated over diving into the surge, and aggressively pecked the fingers of some Dutch tourists who tried to be over-familiar with them. We felt it was almost as if they’d staged a little show just for us!
The scenery changed as we moved away from the coastline and took the road inland to
Cape Point
Indian meets Atlantic - ish the entrance to the National Park, to sparse landscape of thin bush dusted with boulders. We parked up and took the funicular from the visitor centre up to the lighthouse point, which was suddenly swarming with Indian students all fighting to occupy space in our camera lens. Once this raucous set of obstructions had cleared, we managed to get some stunning shots of the cliffs and waves crashing (what seemed like) miles below. After soaking up the scenery it seemed like a good idea to start off back down the hill, especially since a rather dramatic curtain of rain was coming in from the sea at a rapid rate of knots. Halfway down the hill we used our waterproofs for the first time this holiday and we certainly needed them. We damply settled back into the car, set Berk for the final leg back to Cape Town and departed. A quick diversion to Olifantsbos to see if we could see the two shipwrecks from the 1940’s and the 1960’s but we found that we had to do a 90 minute round walk to view them. We decided that the weather was far too inclement for that so like wimps that
we are we hopped back in the car and sped off to distance ourselves from the smell of the rotting kelp on the nearby beach, passing a group of springbok on the way.
The bush morphed into ostrich farms, which gave way to sleepy settlements (Scarborough?) and then gradually built up into Annabel’s greatest driving challenge of the trip; finding our accommodation in Cape Town. Skilfully (?) aided by the (sometimes conflicting) guidance from Mark and Berk, we arrived for check-in at the V & A Waterfront Village, the other side of Cape Town. Security arrangements were the most complex we’d endured so far, but when we reached the apartment we could see why.
The V&A (named after Victoria and her second eldest son Alfred (who laid the first foundations)) is a thriving property development situated on the working harbour. There are a multitude of apartments and a marina mixed in with a huge shopping mall and warehouses filled with African craft markets. Our 2-storey, 2-bedroom apartment is situated overlooking the quiet harbour. Not many boats move around here and you are more likely to be woken by the resident seals barking than any maritime activities.
Having settled in and marvelled at how lucky we were (although I’m sure it cost an arm and a leg to stay here but really we don’t have a clue as we never saw a breakdown of how much each accommodation cost us in SA) we went to investigate what gems the waterfront area was hiding.
We must pause here and talk about the weather. It is fair to say that the weather in SA so far has not been that fantastic but it hasn’t got in our way and as we said today was the first time we had needed to don waterproofs. However it seems that Cape Town is a whole different ball game when it comes to weather and the local often say that they will see four seasons in one day. Spring is due to start in a couple of days on the 1st September but no-one has told winter that yet. So it wasn’t long before we realised that we should have taken our waterproofs with us when we ventured out.
A little moseying around, purchase of provisions and cinema located for tomorrow we ended up in a
Portuguese with a Turkish twist restaurant. Having eaten our fill and satisfied Ellie’s sticky toffee pudding addiction we left with our takeaway turkish delight. Back at the apartment we spent the rest of the evening slobbing out in front of the huge TV with its surround sound system blaring.
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