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It has rained heavily overnight, a bit of relief for the drought. The morning is cool and cloudy.
JP picks us up at 8 am. The plan today is visit the Victoria and Alfred (V&A) Waterfront in Cape Town City Centre, while keeping an eye on the weather to see if it would be appropriate to tackle Table Mountain later in the day.
First it's breakfast at a nearby restaurant. Eggs Benedict are always a treat.
After breakfast we pile back into the van and head for the V&A Waterfront. You might think, by the way, that the name should be Victoria and
Albert, but it's named after Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria, who was the first British royal to visit South Africa in 1860. On the way, JP points out a couple of elevated expressways that come to an end without apparent reason. He tells us that the contractors ran out of money and that movie companies filming in South Africa use them for dramatic car crashes. Not 100%!s(MISSING)ure I believe him...
We arrive at the V&A Waterfront. This extensive reconstruction, remodelling and reimagining of Cape Town's harbour was completed in 1992 and
has been a smashing success. Like Toronto's Distillery District but much larger, it has literally hundreds of shops and restaurants. And it remains a functioning harbour, albeit much less busy than in its historical heyday.
It's tough to find parking even in the morning. Our first stop of the day is the Shimansky Diamond Museum. It's modest but informative. I hadn't realized, for example, that all diamonds are immensely old (at least 3 billion years) and that to retain their diamondness they must be thrust up quickly from very deep in the Earth to the surface through volcanic action. Naturally, there's a diamond shop at the end of the tour, but no hard sell.
We spend about an hour walking around the Waterfront. It's a very attractive area with lots of interesting nooks and crannies. The seagulls are very loud, but they, too, squawk with an accent. Among the sights are a Ferris wheel, the historical Clock Tower, a swing bridge across the harbour, the Victoria Wharf Shopping Mall and the Watershed Mall. In Nobel Square stand statues of South Africa's four Nobel prize winners: Luthuli, Tutu, De Klerk and Mandela. The square also has a rescue dog
centre.
The sun is now out and the sky is mostly blue, but there is a strong wind. JP finds out that the Table Mountain gondola has been closed because of the winds, so we adopt JP's plan B, which is to do a circuit on the Cape Town hop-on, hop-off double-decker bus.
We score nice seats on the top deck and listen to an informative narration as we travel a large loop through the city. We pass by Signal Hill and Lion's Head, two mountains standing guard to one side of Table Mountain, then up Table Mountain as far as the bottom stop for the gondola (not running). We then loop around the backside of Table Mountain along Kloof Rd. (Cliff road), passing by a series of lovely bays and beaches, where rolling waves from the Atlantic thunder in. Names include Camp's Bay, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th beaches, Gantry Bay and Sea Point. On the inland side are a line of massive indentations in Table Mountain known as the Twelve Apostles. Curiously, there are actually 17 of them. On the ocean side, luxurious homes perch precariously on cliff edges. Lots of construction under way. At the foot
of the cliffs are beaches and rocky shorelines with crashing breakers throwing fountains of water high into the air. Completing our circuit, we drive past an immense soccer stadium built for the 2010 World Cup and finally return to the relatively calm waters of the Waterfront.
Lunch is at a restaurant with a gorgeous view of the harbour in the foreground and Table Mountain in the background. We enjoy excellent grilled scampis with peri-peri sauce and salad, washed down by a good local beer named Castle.
Our next stop is the Two Oceans Aquarium in the Waterfront. Highlights include many varieties of jelly fish (including upside-down jellies, which I've never heard of before), reef fish, anemones, sea horses, rock lobsters, spider crabs (gigantic!), rays, sharks, and a wise old sea turtle. The aquarium also houses two species of penguin, including the funny bushy-eyed rockhopper. The later has a loud vocal display where he (presumably) sticks his head straight up and shakes it side to side while emitting a repeated bark that sounds a bit like Elvis doing his "uh-huh, uh-huh" thing.
Free time at the Waterfront. The women decide they want to return to the Watershed Mall
Camp's Bay
Cape Town, SAbecause they saw some interesting wares there. We burn about an hour and a half there. The most interesting thing for sale from my perspective are electric guitars made out of large oil cans. The guy demonstrating them sounds great, but he has added a lot of effects to the sound.
Hooking up again with JP, the women decree that there is a Lindt chocolate shop back at the Clock Tower Centre that they want to visit. They pre-order some specialty chocolates that we will pick up later.
We retrace our steps and push on to a restaurant called Karibu ("welcome" in Swahili). It prides itself in offering upscale cuisine inspired by native African cultures. Appetizers are the largest and tastiest oysters I have ever seen. For my main, I have medallions of three types of antelope–impala, kudu and springbok–with a Amarula cream sauce. I like the springbok the best. Fabulous food, great wine (Pinotage, a vine grafted from Pinot Noir and Meritage grown only in South Africa), and incredible desserts. We are stuffed to the gills.
We roll ourselves back to the van and head home. After some work on the blog, we fall into bed,
rubbing our stomachs and vowing that we will never eat again.
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