More adventures in the Western Cape

Yesterday, rather than try to navigate our way to Cape Point and back, we went the easy route and hired a tour guide/driver for the day…best decision of the trip!  At 8:45 am, Leonard picked us up at our house and off we went to explore!  A very interesting guy, our Leonard spent 30 years working for an insurance agency, in the middle of the city with a beautiful view of Table Mountain…always looking, never experiencing.  Last year, he decided that he was tired of just observing the beauty of Cape Town, and so he got his accreditation at tourism school and has been doing half day to week long adventures all over South Africa ever since.  The tour began weaving through the downtown and waterfront areas, as we learned much more about the areas that we had been traversing for the past three days, getting an up-close view of the World Cup stadium (that has extra-large entry doors to allow for an evacuation of 70,000 people in less than 15 minutes…WOW!).  We then made our way through the seaside neighborhoods and suburbs of CT: Sea Point, Clifton, Llandudno (the most exclusive home of a nudist colony), and Camps Bay (a great place for celebrity-spotting), ALL with amazing views and terrain that rival any coastal village of Europe.  We stopped at Hout Bay (excuse me, the Republic of Hout Bay as they like to be called), a quaint fishing village, and we took a boat out to Seal Island, which is four huge rocks home to hundreds of seals that play and live in the waters outside and within Hout Bay. 

From there we trekked to the ultimate destination, the Cape of Good Hope, a location that we both remember learning about in early elementary school (Leonard affirms how amazing it is how well-know the Cape of Good Hope is to Americans, being so far away from the US).  It does not disappoint; with a strong, cool breeze, and refreshingly clean, tasty air, the Cape does not disappoint and there is something truly magical about being at the SW-most point of Africa, the gateway to India for mid-millennium explorers.  Next is Cape Point, the hill atop which the first lighthouse sat, later replaced by a newer one at the point which juts into the ocean rather than up high (the old lighthouse was often covered by fog or clouds, rendering it useless to most sailors).  We finally make it to Simon’s Town for lunch, home of the South African navy and African penguins.   After a nice lunch looking out onto the bay, we began our search for penguins…they weren’t too hard to find.  Along the path through the bushes, we came across penguin after penguin hanging out in between the brambles.  Authorities don’t understand why they enjoy the warmth of the Boulders in Simon’s Town, but every time the penguins are transported to where they’re “supposed to be,” they beat the truck back to Simon’s Town.  Our final stop was at Kirstenbosch Gardens, a mecca for garden clubs worldwide.  Although we were exhausted and rushed at the end of the day, we couldn’t help but look in awe of the beauty and breadth of the Gardens’ collections.  My mom and grandmother could spend DAYS there.  They had a garden of nearly-extinct plants, a garden of aromatic plants (I have flashbacks to my childhood and my mom constantly telling me to smell her fingers after rubbing mint, chocolate mint, rosemary, sage, et cetera, et cetera), and many more.  Thus ended our cram-packed day of touring, experiencing, and enjoying the areas to Cape Point and back.