This Is The End!

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The Cape
John and Claire Wood After setting foot in 15 different countries and having over 100 different overnight stops in 11 months we arrived in Cape Town for our final five nights.

CT is nice , a fairly small but tidy downtown city area is surrounded by ocean and overshadowed by the massive table mountain. So called because of it's perfectly flat top.

However, when you leave the CBD the city is then home to massive shanty towns, or informal settlements as they are known in Politically Correct language. These towns support the majority of the local population in makeshift sheds and are a far cry from the plush downtown area where basically most of the white people live. There is still a big apartheid hangover in this country and lots still needs to be done to redress the balance.

On this topic we visited Robben Island , this is a former prison island off the coast of Cape Town and has been in use keeeping people there for hundreds of years, helped by the surrounding rough seas. The most famous recent captives were so called political prisoners of the old apartheid regieme including Nelson Mandela. We had a sneak peak in his cell , you used to be able to go in but not nowadays as somebody nicked his spoon, look out for it on e-bay.

We were showed round the prison by a former political prisoner there called Vincent. There's loads of wildlife about and great views of the city and mountain.

Heading up table mountian is another big thing over here. Its steep though and over 1000m high, fortunatley some nice people built a cable car to take you to the top. Pretty excellent views of the surrounding area when you stroll around the moor-esq-land on the top.

Also did a tour of the whole cape penninsular , this is worth doing , mainly coz you get to go to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope which I'm sure everybodies heard of. The seas round here were well rough and its one of the windyest places in the world. Still somebody was trying to surf on the beach nearby......nutter. Also saw penguins , ostrich etc etc.

Fianlly spent our other days roaming Cape Towns streets, its meant to be a "safe city" by SA standards, there is plenty to do but didn't fancy the many museums and shopping centres that are everywhere, we are museumed out and totally skint after all.

One highlight about Cape Town is the selection of international restaurants at a fraction of the price of back home, lots of stuff yer face potential to celebrate the end of our trip.

Stayed in Cape Town backpackers which was a nice hostel , tiny sociable bar staffed by Canadians and locals in the inner subburb of Gardens.

Thats it , sniff , homeward bound or should we say we are actually now home wondering how that happened. Back to English things i.e. watching the rain and complaining about most things , particularly the rain.

If anybody is interested? the best countries on the whole were New Zealand and Vietnam although everywhere we went was good for different reasons. The worst country was probably Singapore and we did spend too long in the US but Yellowstone Park, New York and San Francisco were some of the trip highlights. . . . Syracuse and Cleveland were not. Still glad we went though no regrets etc.

So this is the end of the blog. . . . . unless we continue to write about our everyday lives which would not make good reading so we will spare anybody the torture. Thanks.

That's all Folks!!

John n Claire

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Photos

Centre
Skyscrapers dwarfed by table mountain

Top of the Table
Good views from above.

Beach
Beach at the Cape , really choppy n this was on a good day.