It was a smooth flight from Livingstone to Johannesburg from and then on to Cape Town. It was very relaxing to get to the Cape Grace Hotel, and quite a contrast to the Victoria Falls Hotel. Cape Town is a beautiful city, especially on the harbor. There are more shops and restaurants than you could possibly visit in a short time. One of the major attractions of the area is Table Mountain and the view from the rotating cable car is spectacular during the five minute ride to the top. On some days the cableway does not run because of the notorious high winds for which the city is known. It is also quite a site to see the clouds rise up and cover the mountain like a tablecloth. If you are brave you can do a Table Mountain Abseil — climbing down the 3,000+ foot mountain swinging from a rope. No thanks.
There are many things to explore outside of Cape Town, most notably the Cape of Good Hope.The rocky point is a called a headland which means it is an area of land adjacent to water on three sides. I always had thought that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern most tip of Africa, but that distinction actually goes to Cape Agulhas, which is about 90 miles to the southeast. The Wikipedia says that the rounding of the cape in 1488 was a major milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish a sea route to the Far East. More than 500 ships were wrecked trying to go by the Cape and instead crashing on the rocks. You can see water bubbling around the rocks off shore but many ships in bad weather could not. Now with GPS every ship can know precisely where it is and where any obstacles are. We also visited Cape Point which is just over a mile away. Both are well worth seeing. It was quite a climb to get up to the lighthouse. Unfortunately, the weather gets so bad that the lighthouse was not visible at times and therefore not effective. A few years ago we rounded Cape Horn on a cruise but the weather was so bad I was not able to get a very good picture. Here are some pictures from Cape Town and the Cape of Good Hope. At the end of the day we made a visit to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. I don’t know much about flowers but I have to admit that it was quite impressive.
No trip to Cape Town would be complete without visiting the wine country. Just like California has Napa and Sonoma, South Africa has eleven different wine areas with nice towns and "wine farms". The region we visited is called Paarl and the tour and tasting was at the Seidelberg Wine Estate. The views were beautiful and the wines were excellent.From there we rode through Franschhoek, where the French first made wine in South Africa 300 years ago. We stopped at Haute Cabriére Cellar Restaurant for lunch. The unique restaurant was built into the side of a mountain.
We got to the Cape Town airport at 2 PM thinking we had plenty of time but it turned out to be a chaotic Friday afternoon. We got home twenty-eight hours later. Our luggage arrived twenty-six more hours after that. All in all a really fun and educational trip.