Monday 6 August 2012

Cape Town

Way back in our first week, Max, Vijay, Sarah, Mathilde and I decided that since this weekend we had no plans we would take a spontaneous trip to Cape Town. Despite my moment of "This was a completely mad idea, what were we thinking?" it was a completely fantastic trip.

We got up at 5am on Saturday morning to take a 7am flight to Cape Town. Once out there we picked up our rental car, ready for Sarah to spend all weekend driving us all over the place. As we landed it was miserable and grey, with the odd bit of rain. Imagine British summer and you've just about got it. By some amazing stroke of luck as we set off to drive down the peninsula, the weather started to clear. We made a handful of stops at seaside towns on our way down.



The first big stop was at Boulder's Coastal Park, the nature reserve for African Penguins. Despite Vijay's complaints that they are really quite boring, they are quite cute. And walking along the paths spotting their nests in the undergrowth is quite cool. That said - baby penguins are exceedingly ugly.

We went on to drive down to Cape Point, before riding up on the funicular to get to the light house - interestingly this is completely useless as it fails to actually light up the sea if the weather is anything less than clear. Still pretty beautiful up there though, with a view of white beaches, deep blue water and the beautiful nature reserve on the headland. On our way back up the peninsula, we drove through a group of baboons hanging around by the road, including some babies. They're really quite cute from inside a car, but apparently they're extremely vicious and have been known to literally tear apart cars.



After a quick stop at the ostrich farm, we made our way up the west side of the peninsula, including an amazing twisty cliffside road with absolutely fantastic views from which we watched the sunset (admittedly it was a bit cloudy at that point, still quite beautiful though).

We then headed back to Kommetjie, the seaside town where my old boarding house parents Patrick and Terri Minny live. The Minnys made us an absolutely amazing dinner including a grilled snook, boerwurst, roast chicken a cake for dessert and a lot of delicious South African wine. It was really lovely to catch up, as I probably haven't seen either of them in at least three years. We could not have had a nicer end to our evening than amazing company and dinner on a veranda which was literally on the beach.

After an overnight stay in a dorm in a backpacker's in Cape Town (including Max and Vijay's fear of falling off the top bunk being so bad that Sarah and I had to swap beds with them, as well as a lot of music and general noise from upstairs) we headed out into Cape Town for the morning. Cape Town couldn't be more different from Johannesburg, it is full of colonial architecture, tourists and, frankly, white people. Many Africans complain that Cape Town isn't actually an African city, and I can see this argument. It reminded me of many of the European cities I've been to, particularly in Italy, more than it made me feel like I was in Africa. Despite this, it is a very beautiful city and the waterfront is lovely. Not to mention all the smaller towns surrounding it. After searching in vain for a flea market near the football stadium, and wondering about the precise meaning of the sign which pointed left, right and straight ahead for the stadium, we made our way to Green Market Square, where Mathilde finally bought her coveted crocodile skin handbag.


As it had been a rather cloudy morning and the mountains were shrouded in mist we were having doubts about the feasibility of climbing Lion's Head Mountain. Table Top Mountain is the highest peak in Cape Town, but the cable car to the top was closed, and besides the clouds up there never cleared. We drove up Signal Hill, another sub peak of Table Top, which was totally misty. Before parking at the bottom of Lion's Head and starting our walk up. In terms of the weather - again we couldn't have been luckier; as we went up, the sun came out and by the time we reached the peak it was glorious. The clouds which began to gather on our descent, and the rain in the evening only served to remind us how lucky we'd been.


I'm going to be honest - I am genuinely so proud of myself for getting to the top of that mountain. It's a "moderately hard" walk, so you spend a good bit of it walking along ledges with steep drops to your side and scrambling up rocks. I did chicken out of climbing up the steep rock face using a chain at one point and went the long way round on the recommended route. I had massive vertigo, not to mention exhaustion by the time I got to the top, but the views were completely fantastic. Expect some extremely sexy photos of me bright red and sweaty on the top!

We finished our trip with dinner on the seafront at Camps Bay, watching the sunset and drinking cocktails to kill time before our flight back.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip with some really lovely people.

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