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Published: July 15th 2008
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Table Mountain
The view heading from Robben Island I arrived in Cape Town late Friday evening, expecting a ride into town arranged by the tour company, but this never happened. I don't know why, so I had to take a taxi to my hotel. The taxi driver talked the entire time and told me in detail the history of South Africa. The flight from Amsterdam took longer than the flight from Vancouver to Amsterdam. Africa is a big continent. We flew over Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Angola, and Namibia before getting to Cape Town. Eleven hours crammed into a small aluminum tube with wings along with 200 other people.
My first complete day in Cape Town, Saturday, I just spent walking around the city and taking photographs. It's a beautiful city and Table Mountain dominates the skyline. It's 1000 meters tall and in the middle of town. In the evening I watched the clouds form on top. My hotel room looks onto Table Mountain. As the sun sets, the clouds form on top and roll over the edge, giving the knick name: Table Cloth Mountain. It was a spectacular sight, and I took many photos.
The next day, I took the afternoon tour to the Cape of Good
Cape Town
Walking the streets Hope. This was a small tour in a small van; there were 7 of us and the drive / guide. First we drove to the penguin colony. It's on the Indian Ocean side. You buy a ticket and walked along a boardwalk on the sand until you get to a large colony of African penguins basking in the winter sunshine. There were hundreds of them scattered around, some nesting in the bushes, some making lots of noise, some wandering about and the rest were sleeping oblivious to the crowds of tourists.
Then we drove to the Cape of Good Hope, the famous sign which indicates the Cape. From photos, it looks remote, but it's a tourist zoo. There was a tour bus full of (one particular nationality which shall remain nameless for diplomatic reasons) who wanted to dominate the sign and get their photos without anyone else in their photos. I was pushed aside, but did eventually persist and get my photos. The entire pennisular is a National Park. It's treeless but full of short vegetation, cliffs, smaller hills and rolling surf. It looks like it's above (or south of) the treeline, but it's simply too windswept for any
Cape Town
The view from my hotel window trees to take root. We drove further on to the lighthouse and cape parking lot. Here we could walk around, do a little hiking, snap many photos, eat a snack or buy postcards. Five hundred years ago, this was a remote part of the world and a major achievement when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape and sailed into the Indian Ocean. Now it's a tourist site. We also saw baboons as we were driving back. Where else can you find baboons and penguins occupying the same area?
Yesterday, I took the ferry to Robben Island. This is a small island about 11 kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean. It's now a world heritage site and museum, but it used to be a jail for political prisoners during the Apartheid era. We were guided through the complex by a former inmate. We were shown the tiny cells, including the cell Nelson Mandela was in for 17 of his 25 years in jail. The island had been used for similar purposes throughout it's history. It also used to be a lepper colony, a mental asylum and a convict jail. Always the purpose was to separate these people from the rest of
Cape Point
Standing at the Cape of Good Hope society. The guide was very informative and descriptive. He desribed life including the food rations, forced hard labour, and the isolation. After we were taken around the island by bus. It's a small island and this bus ride only takes a few minutes. You can only visit the island by tour; it would have been nice to wander around a bit more, and the view of Cape Town and Table Mountain is spectacular, but we were rushed through and back onto the ferry.
Today the weather has changed, the clouds have rolled in. It's winter here, less than 12 hours of daylight. Today it's windy, it might rain and Table Mountain is obscured by clouds.
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