Cape Town Day One

We were up early this morning for breakfast and our tour briefing before heading out for the day's sights. We have a large tour group for this trip with 38 other travellers. There is one Brit, three Canadians including us, and the rest are American.

After the briefing we got on the coach - they're not called buses here - and made way to our first stop, the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. The gardens are over 500 hectares in size but only 30 or so of those are cultivated with indigenous plants and trees. The gardens cover most of the east side of Table Mountain. The smell walking through the gardens was so fragrant and the views were amazing. We did a short walk on a wooden walkway up in the tree canopy, where we had views right to the sea.

After leaving the botanical garden we then headed to Boulders Beach to see the African penguins. There is quite a large colony of penguins at the beach and they settled there in the 1980s. They were originally called jackass penguins due to the sounds they make. They sound just like braying donkeys and it was hard to believe the big noise coming coming from such a small bird!

The penguins were so cute waddling in the sand! When they went into the water they instantly became swift graceful swimmers playing in the waves.

We reluctantly left the penguins to have a nice lunch overlooking the sea and from there we continued in to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. The Cape of Good Hope is historically thought of as the southernmost tip of Africa, buts it's been geographically proven that Cape Point is actually the southernmost point.

At Cape of Good Hope we took our pictures at the coordinates sign like everyone who travels here does. The waves crashing against the rocks on the beach reminded us of home.

We drove from there to Cape Point and we walked up the steep path to the original lighthouse that was built on the top of a high hill in 1860. Unfortunately this lighthouse's location was not the best as it couldn't be seen any time the fog rolled in. This caused the sinking of a passenger ship, so in 1919 a new lighthouse was built in a lower location to guide the ships.

Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point are both in a nature reserve and on our way in we saw an ostrich by the side of the road. On the way out we saw a couple more ostriches and a fairly large troop of baboons.

The drive back to Cape Town took about an hour and it was very interesting seeing the different types of architecture. There are very nice homes right on the ocean that would sell for about $350,000 and then there are also the corrugated tin shanty towns that are closer to the big cities. There is definitely a Dutch and British influence on much of the architecture.

The weather started out overcast and a little cold but by mid afternoon had cleared up nicely which made for some spectacular views on our stops. It's fall here going into winter next month, so it can be a bit chilly in the mornings and the rainy season will be starting soon.Read more