Coxen Travels Ink ... South Africa 2014

Coxen Travels Ink .... South Africa

Beer

Castle Draught - 2
Darling Brewery – Black Mist - 5-
Windhoek – Lager – 4

Cider
Savanah Dry - 5

September 19 - 25

Friday - Two tired travelers touched down in Cape Town today on Singapore Airlines flight SQ 748.  Connell met us at the airport and got us to the apartment in Green Market Square. Our apartment looks down onto Green Market Square.  Every day it is filled with locals selling their wares.  We found a grocery store and then did some local wandering so we could at least understand our local neighbourhood.

Saturday – We were up and found the Hop On – Hop Off bus stop.  We road the red route first and then went around on the blue route.  We now see what a GREAT place Cape Town is, WOW!  It is an amazing city with some very rich areas.  Too bad we don’t have a couple of million and we could have a beautiful home overlooking the water.  There is a lot of money here!  We wandered around the V&A (Victoria and Alfred) area and it is quite interesting, kind of like Vancouver’s Granville Island only better and not.  We got a good shot of Table Mountain

Table Mountain taken from the V&A wharf area.

from the docks area.  We will go back down there in the days to come just for the atmosphere.

Sunday – We were up and at it today so we could spend some time on Table Mountain.  First we went to the bus stop and bought tickets for the cable car, good thing we did as it looked like the ticket queue was about 45 minutes long up on the mountain.  We took the Hop On – Hop Off bus to the Cable Car station at the bottom of the mountain and then up we went. The views from the top were fabulous!

Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain, you can see the World Cup soccer stadium (at the base of signal hill on the left) as well as Robbin Island (off in the distance in the bay).

The weather was ideal and the walks available great.  We had a good time!  We then came down and continued with the bus to Camp Bay were we got off.  The beach was packed with people, as were the streets, the weather was just too perfect!  We found a nice seafood restaurant and had a great lunch.  We wandered the promenade for a bit and then road the bus back to stop 5.  Both Camp Bay (I would like to live here) and Clifton (I would love to live here)

Clifton (anyone want to go in on buying one of these?)

are on the red and blue Hop On - Hop Off routes. There was still the yellow route that we had not done so we road the yellow route and learned about district 6.  The Apartheid government had all the people’s homes in District 6 plowed flat in 1966 in order to make room for more city.  It was of course not a white area at the time.  85% of it is still empty lots with weeds to this day.

Monday – What a GREAT day!  We headed out and booked on the ferry to go out to Robben Island.  I had two objectives in mind; one to get a great shot of Devils Peak, Table Mountain and Lion’s Head from the water and; two to learn more about Nelson Mandela.  I learned lots about Mandela,

Madela's cell of 18 years, it was 2 metres by 2.5 metres!

but the darn mountain was mostly in cloud!!

Well not so much in cloud as in haze.  We can see Devils Peak, Table Mountain  and Signal Hill.  Lions Head is behind Signal Hill but is covered in cloud.

We got back into town and went to Mama Africa for dinner ….. WOW!  I had a Springbok steak with sadsa and lentils, while Pat had Bobotie.  Both meals were fabulous!!  Oh yeah I also had a Darling Brewery – Black Mist it was rated very highly check above!

Tuesday – We were up and off on a wine tour.  Along the way we visited three wineries in the Stellenbosch area, saw Nelson Mandela’s last prison  (Drakenstein Correctional Centre) 

Mandela statue outside the prison gates

and had lunch and wandered around in Franschhoek.  The first winery was the Vergenoegd and it was established in 1773!  Yeah it has been around for awhile.  The most interesting thing about them is that they did not use pesticides instead they have about 200 ducks

Ducks off to work for the day

who daily go out into the vineyard and eat pests, etc.  We then visited the Fairview winery.  They had an interesting way of presenting their wines.  They gave you a wine and then you went and tried cheeses with it.  We got to try several cheeses and wines! All in all a good day as we got out of the city and decided we could be wandering around any countryside from Canada, to Australia, New Zealand or rural Europe.  I have had enough wine for quite a while, but it was still fun!
 

Wednesday – Every day just keeps getting better and better!  Today we did a trip to Cape Point.  We had a GREAT guide and the group on the tour was fun!  We stopped first and took a boat out to see a seal colony.  The boat captain got us very close, the seals did not smell to good, but it was interesting getting as close as we did.  Next we went to an African Penguin colony!

This group was just having too much fun!

The boardwalk took you right into the colony down by the beach … very cool! We then drove down to Cape Point the southwestern tip of Africa.  From there we went up to a lighthouse that was 800 meters above see level.  We had a great view, but the highlight was a Right Whale in the shallows of the bay below us, just hanging out.  We then started out trip back and were surprised by many sightings; we saw ostrich,

This a male ostrich the females are actually rather drab looking.

zebra,

Can you see the zebra, he is looking right at you!

bontebok,

A small herd of Bontebok.

more whales

A Right Whale breaching!

and baboons.  The baboons

This baboon family was just being photogenic.

even crawled up on the roof of our touring van.  We then went to the Cape Town botanical garden …. It was amazing we should have planned a whole day just to go there.  All in all a great day for our last in Cape Town!