Hout Bay

Our AirBnB was in Hout Bay which is just outside of Cape Town proper, around on the other side of Table Mountain.  We were back to renting a car with left-side driving but this time a manual shift.  Glad I had practice in other countries!  There are a few slum areas in Cape Town but overall the city is  beautiful with nice parks, beautiful landscapes and very solidly middle-class.

The first of many spectacular sunsets in Africa.  This one is from the park between the grocery store and our AirBnB in Hout Bay.

Finding a good local café that served our favourites (latte, chai tea, hot chocolate) is always a win.

The view from Hout Bay itself.

We did arrive during their fall season and our general experience was that it was pretty windy and when that wind blew off the ocean, it could get quite cold!  In this case it was cold and blowing bits of sand so the girls sheltered behind dad!  We enjoyed the view, but didn’t stay long.

Skeleton Gorge

Our first big adventure in the area was to take a hike up Skeleton Gorge which is one of the paths up the backside of Table Mountain.  The trailhead starts from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and so we had to pay an entrance fee for that.  What we didn’t realize until we were on the trail is that the gardens closed at 5:30 which limited the amount of time we had and how far we could go.  We got to the top of the gorge, but only had time to make it part of the way to the highest part of Table Mountain.

It was quite a steep hike up with some ladders and boulder scrambling and we definitely felt it by the time we got to the top.

The view down Skeleton Gorge with Cape Town in the distance.

A little ways in we were surprised to see a sand dune area and a reservoir.

Cape Peninsula

We also took a day trip south along the Cape Peninsula which extends from Hout Bay down to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope.  The Cape Peninsula has the Atlantic Ocean on one side and False Bay on the other.

The view from Chapman’s Peak looking back at Hout Bay with Sentinel Rock guarding the bay entrance on the left side of the picture. 

We experienced our first slow down due to a troop of baboons along the way. 

Cape Point

The end of Cape Peninsula has two points.  The Eastern point on the False Bay side is Cape Point.  It has an old lighthouse (and a modern one at the very end) and is composed of magnificent cliffs. 

Go straight from here for about another 3,800 km and you hit Antarctica.

Cape of Good Hope

The view from Cape Point towards Cape of Good Hope.  It is about about a 1/2 hour hike.

SOOO windy you could lean into it!

No one on the beach with that kind of wind except for the hundreds of birds on the cliffs.

Boulders Beach

Boulders Beach is halfway up Cape Peninsula on the False Bay side and is most famous for, well its big boulders on a beach, but also for its colony of African penguins.  After missing out on penguins in New Zealand, it was exciting to see a large colony.  This area is a conservation area that started in 1982 with only a pair of penguins but it has grown to about 3000 birds.

Between the beach and the town is an area of brush and trees with a boardwalk that allows people to see the penguins nesting up close and personal without disturbing them, but also acts as a fence to prevent the penguins from getting into town.

View from the boardwalk down to Boulders Beach.

Some beautiful flowering bushes along the path.

At the bottom of the path to the beach there were some rock hyraxes which are called dassie in South Africa.

It is pretty fun to find your way around the maze of boulders, but especially cool when you run into a penguin doing the same thing.

They are quite adorable and fun to watch them waddle around.

Friends of Friends

Our YA friend from Chile actually studied in Cape Town for a while and has a few connections here.  He gave us the names of his “Spiritual Parents” who he thought had an AirBnB.  Their AirBnB was not available in this season, but they did invite us to their church and over to their house for a delightful South African lunch of bobotie (we got the recipe!).  We were richly blessed by their hospitality and fellowship.

Making new friends!

They even had a sjoelback (Dutch shuffleboard) so we got to play a few games.

They also shared our love of music and we sang some hymns and praise songs around the piano.

We were nourished, body, mind and soul.

Robben Island

We felt a trip to Cape Town wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Robben Island, the Alcatraz like prison where Nelson Mandela, and many others, where held prisoner during the Apartheid.  

The view of Cape Town and Table Mountain behind it from the ferry to Robben Island.

Our first guide took us on a bus tour of various locations on the island.  The picture on the left is the rock quarry where the prisoners had to work to smash rocks.  The pile in the middle was created during a 1995 reunion of ex-political prisoners, when Mandela spontaneously put down a stone in the middle of the quarry.  Each former prisoner followed suit and an impromptu memorial of their history on Robben Island was created.

During our bus ride, one of the guests heard the guide talk to the driver using clicks in their language and asked her about it.  She got on the microphone to explain and demonstrate to everyone.

 

After the bus tour, we entered the prison itself and had another guide who had also been a political prisoner there in the 80s-90s.

The building where our guide was kept and him telling us what life was like, while we sat in a room that housed many inmates (as opposed to other buildings that had single cells).

The building and cell where Nelson Mandela was held.

Definitely a thought provoking and somber visit.

Table Mountain

Since we didn’t make it to the highest side of Table Mountain with the view towards downtown Cape Town when we did our hike up Skeleton Gorge, we decided to take the gondola up this side of Table Mountain.

Our next destination as taken from the ferry terminal in downtown Cape Town.

The view up and the view down (with Robben Island in the distance (half covered by the cables on the left).

The view from the gondola out towards the Atlantic ocean as it approached the top of Table Mountain.  The gondola was quite unique in that it was round and rotated slowly as it ascended and descended giving everyone a 360 degree view of the area.

The gondola came up on the Western side and the highest part was the Eastern side shown here.  However, it really is mostly flat and the elevation change was only about 20m from one side to the other.  One surprise is that a lot of the top is puddles and pools of water trapped in little pockets between the rocks which were home to frogs which serenaded us on the 3km hike. 

Looking South down towards the reservoir and bluff we had hiked to from the Skeleton Gorge trail.

Stunning cliffs and views no matter which edge you looked out from.