Ok; I have to confess at the outset that I didn’t spend hardly any time in Cape Town city. I arrived in the early evening and had booked a day tour through Get Your Guide to Table Mountain and the Cape Peninsula for the following day. While I may have missed sites in the Mother City, what did I see on the excursion more than made up for it.  The group consisted of seven people, two young women from California, a mother and daughter from Germany and a couple for Queensland, Australia and me. Our first stop was the Table Mountain cable car, which is an experience in itself. The car circles around in 360 degree motion so that everyone can see everything.  I think we could use this technology in some of ours in Salzburg!

It was a cloudy day when we left, but we exited the car above the clouds to a phenomenal view.  Sections of the coastline peaked through the clouds, but otherwise it was a sea of white fluff with the green canyons and brown plateaus rising above.  There are a number of hikes on the plateau, but as we only had a bit less than an hour, I had to keep mine short. There are regular footpaths for the visitors, but also rock paths that can lead back to the footpaths or simply stop amid the knee-high vegetation. A few yellow flowers were beginning to bloom amid the green shrubs and greyish white rocks creating a vibrant vista.

It would have been better to have had more time to hike the mountain, but the tour had a schedule for each stop, and we needed to move on to Bo-Kaap with its very colorful houses from the Malay community. There are now number of galleries in this section of town and a few of them use only recycled items in their production.

From Bo-Kaap, we headed down the coast to Simon’s Rock to see the African penguins.  Our driver/guide (who was from the DRC), said that the penguins were the same as those in the Beagle Channel, but while they may be related, my photos of the Argentinian penguins show slightly different facial features than the ones in Simon’s Rock.  Regardless, penguins everywhere are amazing creatures.

After lunch in a seaside restaurant by Simon’s Rock, we headed on to the Cape of Good Hope Lighthouse. At the carpark there is a funicular that will take people up to just below the lighthouse, but there is also a footpath, and this is what I choose to use. It only took about 12 minutes to get to the top, from where I could see three Humpback whales playing in the distance. They were too far away for a photo but just watching them was fun.  The view from the top is incredible and back in the van on the way down to the shoreline, the driver explained the reasons between the names Table Bay and False Bay. It seems that only when the early sailors could see Table Mountain were they at the right bay, i.e., Table Bay; when they couldn’t see the mountain they were at the False Bay and had to make adjustments to their calculations.

Near the sign for the Cape of Good Hope, there were fur seals on the rocks in the Atlantic Ocean, with ostrich by the shore and an eland on the hillside.  I had not been expecting this wildlife at this site and was very happy to see them.

The way back to Cape Town was via the new Chapman’s Peak Road with a spectacular sunset.  This one-day tour of Table Mountain and the Cape is one I can recommend; it was filled with beautiful views, wildlife and good insights.