Cape Town - Best City Yet!

When we left the Gansbaai area, we weren't sure what to expect from the second largest city in South Africa, but from what we had heard from other travelers, we were definitely excited! Driving past the first township brought us back to reality. Check out Erin's last post for more on our experience with townships.

Driving through a three-sided tunnel in the side of the mountain along the ocean.

When we arrived at our backpacking lodge, knew we had a lot of ground to cover even in the longer-than-usual 2 weeks we had in Cape Town. This first weekend was eaten up by exploring downtown and then southern part of the peninsula with our car before we had to return it. Because we had changed our volunteering plans, we stopped by our planned volunteer organization area, Hout Bay, which is about 20 minutes south of Cape Town. From there, we worked our way south through Chapman's Peak (awesome views and drive!) towards Simon's Town.

African penguins at Boulder Beach.

Simon's Town is a cool small town with Boulder Beach, the home of a large African Penguin colony that started from 2 couples of mating penguins. After a small fee, we were able to get closer access than I could of imagined (as close as we wanted). Penguins mate for life so it was easy to get some romantic pictures (I guess). They were also losing their old feathers and replacing them with new ones, during which they couldn't swim, so they looked kind of relaxed just hanging out and getting some sun on the beach.

The sunset from Signal Hill.

After Simon's Town, we had a great seafood lunch at Kalk Bay and headed back to Cape Town. We got back early and decided to cross off one of the top things on the "To do list" for Cape Town: watching the sun set from on top of Signal Hill. Cape Town is set in the valleys of many different hills and mountains while these elevated areas are left mostly untouched. These areas are mostly designated as parks of some sort. We drove up the hill with our bottle of wine and got some awesome pictures of the sun setting over the Atlantic. Ocean.

This is the "Coca Cola Man" (not Lego Man) at the Waterfront. It's made completely of crates and cases.

After returning our Budget rental car (an overall good experience) the next morning, we walked to the area known as the Waterfront. If anyone knows San Fransisco's Pier 39, it's comparable to this. There are tons of local and chain shops, restaurants, and entertainment. We ended up seeing some Native Americans playing some of their traditional music in one of the open areas.

Nelson Mandela's cell at the prison on Robben Island.

This is when we decided to change plans an do Robben Island. This compares to San Fransisco's Alcatraz, but instead of actual criminals, Robben Island held many political prisoners including the great Nelson Mandela for 18 years. We took a bus tour of the entire island and learned a lot about the apartheid government and South Africa's history. It was interesting and a first for us to see another country's struggle with race and civil issues. Erin downloaded Mandela's book Long Walk to Freedom the next day...

Kirstenbosch Gardens

The following weekend, we decided to become ultra-tourists and do the Hop-on, Hop-off bus. This bus was about $25 each for us to us the double-decker buses with open tops for all of Saturday and Sunday. We could get on and off as we wanted and they have routes all over Cape Town. The first day we visited one of the best gardens in the world, Kirstenbosch Gardens. We didn't know this, but apparently this is one of the major floral kingdoms of the world. Afterwards, we did wine tastings at two wineries. One of these was the oldest in South Africa (1650s?).

The view of the valley while we had some wine.

We took the cable-car up Table Mountain and hiked down.

It's hard to beat this view.

The second day of our bus tour, we took the bus to the fabled Table Mountain. We decided to do the cable-car on the way up, and hike our way down. The cable car and all of the mountain give amazing views of the Cape, but it is some of the strongest winds I have ever experienced. Luckily, the clouds moved long enough for us to get some good pictures before the 2 hour hike down the steep gorge to the bus station.

It was CRAZY windy, as shown by my hair...

Our third, and last, weekend in Cape Town was still filled with last-minute things we had missed. We were able to climb to the top of Lion's Head on Saturday which was much more extreme than we were expecting, but also gave us the best views (360 degrees) of the Cape Town area. Our taxi driver informed us on our way there that someone had died two weeks before from slipping and falling almost 100 feet, but we made it without a scratch.

Lion's Head gave us 360 degree views of the Cape Town area.

It seems like there is always a good of view of Table Mountain in Cape Town.

We used chains and ladders to get up and down from Lion's Head.

Yesterday, we spent the entire day at 4 different wineries on a tour with African Story Wine Tours. There are many wineries that extend all the way from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. We were able to visit the top three, Stellenbosch, Franshoek, and Paarl. It was a long day, but our guide was great, the food was awesome, and (from what we were told) some of the best wine in the world. Our group had Chileans, Canadians, and another 4 Americans who were from California. It was a blast and they gave us plenty of advice from our time in Chili and Peru.

As you can see, a silly picture was not hard for our group by the end of the day!

We are now waiting for our flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina which leaves tonight. During our short stay in Cape Town, we have come to see this as a special city and our favorite that we have seen so far. We have learned there is SO much to see in Africa and, from our own experience and all the stories we have heard about other places in Africa, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes it's hard not to think of everything you haven't seen and it makes us both want to come back already.

(Written January 29th)