Cape Town is a beautiful city reminiscent of Adelaide in Australia with a climate very similar to Vancouver.  Not too hot in summer and rainy winters.  We have been very fortunate on this trip with no rain as of yet but we understand the rains will start any day now, possibly tonight!  

Our morning dawned with brilliant sunshine and a view of Table Mountain from the lobby of the hotel.

We are told we are very fortunate as 40+% of the time the mountain is obscured in clouds or haze, so once again the travel gods have smiled on us. Table Mountain is a huge flat-top mountain that abuts Cape Town to the east.  The main city is between Table Mountain and the Atlantic.  The coastline  is very rocky with the occasional beach and very cold waters, again similar to Vancouver.

We boarded our bus for an early trip to the mountain which can get very busy on a beautiful day like today.  The top of the mountain is 3,500 feet high with a cable car that takes you to the top.

The cars are barely visible in the middle of this photo.  Here’s a closer look…

These cars are huge, easily holding 100 people and the floor slowly rotates to give everyone in the car a 360 degree view going up and down.  Here is another view from the top.

Table mountain offers breathtaking views of Cape Town and all of the surrounding area for miles

The top of the mountain is covered with hundreds) of varieties of protea, a type of flowering plant we had never heard of which resembles a combination of succulent, evergreen.  Protea are native to South Africa and grow all over the area in an endless variety, much like orchids.  Their flowering season was just beginning so we only caught a couple in bloom.  They come in every color, shape and size under the sun.

Basically all of the plants you see in the photo below are different varieties of protea while the shrubland is called fynbos.

We took in the views from the mountain and the many towns that surround Table Mountain in addition to Cape Town

Then we discovered these fellows clinging to the rocks surrounding the top of the mountain.

These are Rock Hyrax or “Dassies”.  Although they look somewhat like groundhogs, believe it or not, they are most closely related to elephants or manatees (mini land manatees!).

Then it was back down the mountain for a visit to the remains of District Six.  As I have many history nerds viewing this blog I’ll save you the trouble and link to the wiki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_Six

We met a docent Joseph Schaffers at the District Six museum, housed in a former Methodist church in the area.  Joseph lived in the district until he was 28 when he and 60,000 other residents of this thriving multi-cultural area were forced out during apartheid and all of their homes buldozed to make a whites-only area in 1966.  The story is both tragic and compelling.  

Apartheid in South Africa did not really begin in full force until 1948 when the National Party came into power.  This was a racist regime on a scale even worse than our own civil rights atrocities during the last century.  It continued until 1991 after Nelson Mandela was released from his nearly 30 years of imprisonment.  It is a chapter in Cape Town history that still lingers in the “townships” where blacks and colored persons were relocated during apartheid and its effects are still lingering today as Joseph explained.  

After this informative presentation we stopped by the area where the Arab and Indian peoples were relocated.  They fared better then the blacks and other colored people.  One characteristic was that the tended to live in multi family, multi generational units and combined what monies they had so they could afford to build better housing.  This area has become a colorful and popular area of the city.

We were returned to the beautiful One and Only for lunch on our own and shopping if desired.  Tim took to the bar to do some blogging 😉

That evening we set off for a beautiful “braai” (South African for a “barbi” or barbecue) at a local chef’s estate in the beautiful hills overlooking Hout Bay.

We were treated to a delicious meal hosted by the chef and his lovely wife along with a couple of assistants.

A wonderful meal to end another beautiful day in Cape Town.