Author: drewwfaust@gmail.com

We’ve been poking around Cape Town the last few days. On Sunday we headed to Kalk Bay, a cute little town on False Bay a bit south of the city. We had fish and chips for lunch and poked around shops and galleries. We drove around the peninsula a bit enjoying the sights.

We went to the District Six museum on Monday. District Six is a section of Cape Town where the apartheid government forcibly removed residents to rebuild it – “clean it up” if you will. More very somber stuff.

Last evening was our last in Cape Town. We took the super touristy sunset sail.

We took another peek outside on Saturday morning and saw nothing but blue skies. We headed off to Table Mountain. Leena decided to take the cable car up (steep trails aren’t kind to her left knee due to an old soccer injury) while I took the Platteklip Gorge trail. It’s about a 2000 foot ascent from the trail head. A look up just after the trail head. Definitely steep.

A peek over at Lions Head and Signal Hill (left to right) from early on the trail.

Another look up from the midpoint.

A look back down from the top. The trail ends by coming up through a crevice in the face of Table Mountain (and good that it does because I’m no rock climber).

Once at the top, I had a 1.5k hike over to the top of the cable car to meet Leena. I got there right as she walked off. There was enough of a line at the bottom to make the timing perfect. Lions Head, Signal Hill and Robben Island from the top – note that Table Mountain is quite a bit higher.

More from the top.

After putting in our “work” in for the day, we hit the beach at Camps Bay. Today was the warmest weather yet in Cape Town – sunny and mid-70s. But the Atlantic Ocean here is still really cold.

We awoke Friday and planned to hike up Table mountain. However, a peek out our door revealed the “tablecloth,” a cloud that forms with a southeast wind and covers the mountain top.

We called an audible and decided to hike Lions Head instead. We could see Table mountain and the tablecloth through most of the ascent. The trail winds around Lions Head like a spiral staircase affording great views of the city from every angle.

A couple from the top. You can see Robben Island in the first.

We headed to the V & A Waterfront in the afternoon and checked out the aquarium. The tablecloth never let up, so we made the right call hiking Lions Head instead. Leena really enjoyed getting close to the clown fish.

We visited Robben Island on Wednesday. It’s a small island about 12k from the Cape Town waterfront (about 7k from the nearest land) that was used for several hundred years as a prison. It had a leper colony for a time. Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison here.

We took a ferry over, and despite the sobering nature of the trip and what the island represents, the views were fantastic. The second shot is from Robben Island.

We took a bus tour of the island with several stops. The tour guide shared that while the closing of Robben Island and the end of apartheid was clearly a major milestone for the country, he alluded to the fact that it did not magically solve every issue. He was very measured in his words.

The best part of the tour was a guided tour through the main prison area by a former prisoner. He gave his own story of how he ended up in the prison. He was part of a student protest in Soweto in 1976 that resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. I believe he said he was one of just 19 students arrested and sent to Robben Island though thousands of students participated in the protest. Perhaps he was an organizer; perhaps just unlucky.

He addressed how the government prosecuted the students: they labeled them terrorists. Not to get too political on our little travel blog, but there are parallels to what our own government does today. We have our own island prison for people labeled “terrorists”; we don’t even give them trials. Shame.

Mandela’s cell:

I did actually buy something in the gift store: Mandela’s memoir Long Walk to Freedom. I’m a third of the way through it – remarkable.

We drove south from Cape Town to the Cape of Good Hope (and Cape Point) on Tuesday. It’s only about 60k. We first stopped at Boulders Beach to see the penguin colony there.

We arrived at the Cape of Good Hope and took the obligatory sign pic PLUS a selfie just to make sure you knew we were there.

Point Cape, just east, has the lighthouse. At one point it was the brightest lighthouse in the world.

A look west to the Cape of Good Hope.

So, that was the tip of a continent. On the drive back up to Cape Town we stayed on the Atlantic side of the peninsula. (We drove along False Bay, the east side of the peninsula, on the way down.) The road along Chapman’s Peak is famous for its difficult construction including a section literally carved out of the rock. Leena got a great action photo (note: speed limit is 20k in this section; also, car is a right drive).

We headed up Signal Hill (~350m) for views of Table Rock and a sunset over the Atlantic.

We departed Franschhoek on Monday and drove over a mountain pass to leave the valley. The view from the top.

We took the scenic route to Cape Town. We headed south (and a bit east) to Hermanus. It’s a town famous for whale viewing and seems to exist pretty much just for that purpose. We did indeed see whales, but really, it’s not really something you can capture without more patience and a much better camera than ours. Anyway, here’s Leena with either the Indian or Atlantic Ocean behind. (It seems debatable where one stops and the other starts.)

We then followed the coast to Cape Town. Here’s the view from False Bay. The far side of False Bay – barely visible – is Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope.

We flew to Cape Town Friday, picked up the rental car at the airport, and drove to the winelands – Stellenbosch. It’s always a bit disorienting to drive on the left side of the road, but it will start to feel normal after a couple of more days (at least that was the case in Australia). We did fairly well navigating, but the maps we were given weren’t great. Just as we felt off course and decided to pull onto a side street to regroup, the guest house we were looking for was magically on the corner. They had one room left so we booked it.

We started Saturday at Lanzerac, an estate that’s been around since 1692. Old school. The formal entry:

Next up was Ernie Els. (He’s a golfer. A really good one.) Now, I might have spotted this among the many wineries here and given it a go, but it was actually recommended to us by the place we were staying. We got a cellar tour, and the wine was really quite good. And when given the chance to play some golf, of course I gave it a go. It’s a 30 yard pitch over a little water feature…

We finished at Guardian Peak with a late lunch. By the way, the wine here is really good and very reasonable. In fact, it’s cheap. We each grabbed a glass of wine before dinner yesterday, and the charge on my Visa translated to $4.12. For two decent glasses of wine.

On Sunday we drove about half an hour over to Franschhoek. It’s a gorgeous town set among mountain peaks. We started at Leopard’s Leap and continued to Moreson.

We’ll close with a nice evening shot from our walk to dinner.

We wrapped up the safari portion of the trip at Camp Okuti in Botswana. We shared our drives there with Tom and Valerie and had a great time getting to know one another even as we had a couple of vehicle breakdowns. I finally got a decent shot of an impala – they’re skittish and run away pretty quickly, so most of my shots were of them running away.

Our guide Captain estimated that this young zebra at no more than four days old.

We saw the same lions as well as antelope and of course elephants.

We saw a huge Baobab tree that elephants are trying to cut down. Check out the wedge they’re carved out in the lower right of the tree. They’re getting close.

A vervet monkey posed for us in a tree.

It’s getting late on the final drive, and though we’ve been hoping to find an elusive leopard or cheetah, it seems like we’re just heading to a nice spot for the sundowner glass of wine. Then we pull up to this guy, a leopard cub that’s ~18 months old. Mama has left him while she’s out on a hunt. He’s totally docile and basically spends his time grooming like any house cat and checking out the cars that have pulled up by him. What a finish to our safari time!

Finally, a shot of Tom, Valerie and Captain at the sundowner lining up a photo of some spotted hyenas that came by to check us out. Don’t worry, they stayed several hundred yards away as Captain said they would.

We wrapped up our final morning at Kanana Camp with a short game drive before hopping another bush flight deeper into the Okavango Delta.

We had the same pilot from two days earlier and I got to fly the plane for a while. This came with the assurance that I wouldn’t brag about it in camp or let the bosses know…

Note: This is as easy as steering a car on cruise control. Though I will say that every bit of turbulence was greeted with a bit more anxiety from the person taking the picture. A view of the delta (our camp is presumably in the picture) and the view from our tent. Camp Okuti is perhaps the most luxurious yet, including both indoor and outdoor showers.

As we head out on our first drive from Camp Okuti, our driver points out a tree that’s being overtaken by a Strangler Fig tree. About a year ago at work, someone shared a post about Agile software development being similar to a Strangler Fig tree: you’re often replacing software a bit at a time while always keeping it running. I enjoyed seeing one in person.

The termite mounds here are incredible. We saw some in Kenya, but they weren’t nearly as big. The ones here take decades to build and can last over 100 years. Many are much taller than me. There consistency is similar to concrete.

We also found some lions on the drive and enjoyed a few more amazing African skies.

We took a few boat rides into the Okavango Delta including some time in a mokoro (canoe). From camp, here’s the beach (with fire pit put to good use each evening), dock and boat.

We headed out into the delta, carefully passed some hippos (just stay in the shallow water), got into the mokoros and learned to spot tiny frogs on the reeds.

We also saw birds. Lots and lots of birds. A disturbing number of birds. Let’s just say that the “white” tree in the one shot isn’t a white tree. It’s just the bird droppings… We start with an African Fish Eagle, some Grey Pelicans, and then just an idea of what I mean when I say lots of birds. There were dozens of trees like this.

If you’re thinking the sunset on the water while drinking a lovely glass of rose was nice, you’d be right.