To the Cape of Good Hope

It is 6:30 AM here in Cape Town, as I start to put my thoughts together to relay our experiences here over the last couple  of days. We did not do anything on the afternoon of our arrival here, the day before yesterday, but that evening we dined here in the hotel with our Micato  guide, Alan Petersen and the American couple that we would be spending all of our time with here in southern Africa. 

Our guide Alan, is very interesting man. He was classified as Coloured during the Apartheid era. Coloured meant that during the Apartheid years, Alan was lumped into one of two racial groups between the White and Black groups (there was also an East Indian group). His ancestry includes European, Khoi (native people of the Cape), Indian and two other distinct genetic lines that make him an interesting mix. He is a very intelligent man who was not allowed to enter Cape Town University in 1976 because of his racial background. He is also a member of the ANC party. As an ANC member he is distinctly in the minority because most Coloured people in the Cape area side politically with the Whites. As he was not allowed to study for the architecture degree that he dreamed of, he became a teacher and later a Headmaster in the Coloured school system during the apartheid years.  After Apartheid opportunities in the tourism business have opened up to him and he has worked for Micato for the past nine years. He is knowledgeable, attentive and service-oriented. He also has a wonderful way with clients, colleagues and just about everyone we came into contact with during our time with him. He has met Mandela and Tutu and has had clients such as Bill Cosby and Jesse Jackson.   He also has a million stories as I am sure you can imagine.

Our travelling companions are Dick and Gail Brown from Richmond, Virginia. They both are Psychologists and have Ph. D.'s in Psychology. Dick is still employed part-time doing evaluations on people that are applying for social assistance and Gail is retired. They both have taught in the past and have some interesting stories about tutoring individuals with football scholarships. Gail has deep roots in Virginia and can trace her ancestry there to the 1600's. They are both about 65 years old and have no children. They do have a cat named Alice, after the daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Mrs. Gym and I will be analyzing them in more detail over the next week or so.

The dining room here in the Cape Grace Hotel is called the Signal and that is where the 5 of us met on Monday evening to get to know each other. We had an excellent meal there as well as some excellent wine. Alan knows all the people that work here in the hotel and he helped the restaurant staff make that meal a truly unforgettable one. 

We retired for the night to our room on the third floor. Unfortunately we had less than stellar sleeps that night. 

We started out the next morning at 9 AM, when our Driver, Achmed and Alan, picked us up at the hotel. The day turned out to be one of the most amazing days that I have ever experienced. Mrs. Gym will also admit a few extra-ordinary things were experienced on Tuesday.

Our tour started with a drive along the waterfront communities here in Cape Town on the M6 highway.   This road, which is also known as Victoria Road, snakes along several beautiful beaches that are punctuated by high escarpments along which the highway rises to the cliff-tops and then drops again down to the next beautiful beach. Adjacent to the highway is some of the priciest real estate in South Africa. This road reminds me of the Pacific Coast Highway in southern California.

As you leave the city, you enter a series of protected areas which are part of the great Table Mountain National Park that runs along the coastline all the way to the Cape of Good Hope. You also pass through a few communities that were there before the protected areas were declared, such as Hout Bay and Chapman's Peak. Finally, you reach the boundary of the Cape before you get to the Cape Point section of the park where we stopped at an ostrich farm and also spotted the first wild African animals of the trip.

Hout Bay

The water is brilliant blue and very clear

Ostrich farm

Bontebok

We then drove onto the section of the National Park that includes the Cape of Good Hope. It is a massive fenced and protected area that contains no developments whatsoever. You pass through a gate manned by park staff and then continue on to a funicular that for a few Rand takes you up the escarpment to an area from which you can climb 124 steps to the upper lighthouse. From there the view is spectacular as shown in the following pictures:

It costs a few Rand to ride a funicular (cable car) most of the way up to the lighthouse

124 steps from the top of where the funicular lets you off to the lighthouse

Looking out down on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Cape

Looking due south towards Antarctica - note the line where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean currents meet

The lighthouse on top of the Cape of Good Hope

back down at sea level we are at the furthest most south-western point of Africa

After coming down from the lighthouse we got back into the van and made our way off the Cape. On the way out of the park we spotted two other African mammals before we hit the gate. First our driver spotted a group of Eland and then we saw some primates.

Eland

Momma Baboon

Baby Baboons
Where is Pappa Baboon?

In my next posting I will crank things up with a description of the attempted car-jacking we witnessed by an unruly gang of thugs and also try to describe the seen of a black and white ball on the beach further on down the road.