Thursday 26th
We got our 5am taxi to the airport and got to Cape Town. It was lovely and sunny there, so at the tourist desk we immediately bought tickets to the top of Table Mountain, which were valid for a couple of days. After collecting the hire car, we drove to the hotel (Upper East Side) and checked in. The rooms were OK, but in the mean time while we were there clouds had come in and it started to drizzle, so we drove to the waterfront and had a look around the shops there, as well as the harbor. We went back to the hotel and as we were so tired had a little siesta. In the evening we decided to catch the free shuttle to the waterfront and went to a nice Thai restaurant there for some lovely food.
Friday 27th
After breakfast, and seeing the cloudy weather around cape town, we headed out in the car for a trip along the peninsula. We went through Camps bay (where we had a walk on the sand), Hout Bay and through the lovely Chapmans Peak Drive for some stunning views. Eventually we got to the national park and to the Cape Point itself, where we climbed to the Lighthouse and had a great view of the Point (where the Indian ocean meets the Atlantic ocean). Bhavni did her usual paparazzi impression.
We stopped at a penguin colony, which had small cute penguins. Bhavni was reminded of the penguins of Madagascar and proceeded to take numerous photos to try to get the perfect shot of them.
On the way back to Cape Town we went through Simons Town. When we were looking for parking someone was leaving but we ended up waiting ages for them to turn on the car and leave. We had some ice cream and walked around – Its a lovely little colonial town with small boutique shops and a bay full of sails.
When we got back to Cape Town, we headed straight to Table Mountain. The top was hidden by cloud, whereas everywhere else was clear. When we asked on of the guys around near the parking he said that all week the weather in Cape Town is meant to be rubbish. Well we went and sat near the base and watched the sights, including all the tourists coming down of the mountain. The board displaying the conditions stated that visibility was zero! After a while Bhavni noticed that the clouds were a bit more broken with small holes appearing now and then, so we approached some of the staff who said that this is the best it had been all day, so after umming and ahhing we went up. The views were superb, with the beaks in the clouds we could see Cape Town. It just lasted a while before the clouds started to get a little thicker again, so we went and had a walk on one of the trails – all the breaks in the cloud vanished. Walking in cold clouds we got slowly damp and cold, so we went to the cafe on the mountain and had a hot drink sitting near a fire, before heading back down and to the hotel.
As we did not want to go to the waterfront we got a recommendation to go to one of the mall complexes for dinner, where we went to a wood fired oven pizzeria. Pasta and salad was lovely, but the pizza was a little uncooked and when we asked them to cook it a bit more, they put the whole plate in the oven, so just cooked the top more! Oh well.
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