The Bahblog

Arriving in Cape Town

We left Muweti on Tuesday, spent the night by the Joburg airport, and flew to Cape Town on Wednesday morning. So far we are loving Cape Town! Our AirBnB is a studio apartment in a very nice and walkable neighborhood. That's actually the first thing that stood out to me in Cape Town - we can walk all around which is a nice change compared to Joburg. We spent our first day relaxing (spotting animals is exhausting) and then decided to reward ourselves from all of this time relaxing with sunset cocktails at The One and Only bar. We sat outside along the canal and watched hints of the sunset over Table Mountain. It was a lovely introduction to this beautiful town.

Day Two - Table Mountain & Camp's Bay

We began the second day by walking down to the Victoria and Alfred (V&A) waterfront (~15 minute walk from AirBnB) and hopping on the Hop On Hop Off bus and going to Table Mountain.

We were unsure whether we would hike it as there have been numerous recent attacks on hikers along the trail (including a recent one on a group of nine hikers). We did walk up to the trailhead (about a 20 minute walk from the cable car station) and only saw a handful of people starting on the hike. That, along with the temperature in the 90s, convinced us that we should take the cable car so we walked back and hoped on it.

The ride to the top was breathtaking and quick. Once up there, we stopped for ice cream because we had just made it to the top of a mountain (does it matter how you got there?) and then walked all around. It's gorgeous up there - you have a wonderful view of the Atlantic, Cape Town, and the Twelve Apostles. We stopped for many photos and took in the scenery before taking the cable car down to the bottom.

Once at the bottom, we hopped back on the HOHO bus and took it to Camps Bay, a nice beach town that reminds me a bit of Santa Monica. We walked around the beach and dipped our toes in the Atlantic (it's cold) then grabbed lunch at a nice cafe along the boardwalk.

Nate had the best fish of his life and was kind enough to offer me a bite. Mid-meal, we both realized how incredibly sunburned we were. I mean realllly sunburned. We both forgot to put sunscreen on the backs of our legs and that was very obvious by the afternoon.

After Camps Bay we took the HOHO back to Cape Town and the V&A waterfront. The 15 minute walk back to the AirBnB felt like an eternity with the sun beating down on us, but we did stop and buy some aloe vera. We spent the evening relaxing and Nate ran out to get a beer at a bar down the street (we can walk around at night here!).

Day Three - District Six Museum, Ethiopian food, Botanical Gardens, a Cruise around the Harbor

Today we got up and again made our way down to the V&A waterfront to hop on the HOHO bus. Our first stop today was the District Six Museum. District Six was a thriving area of Cape Town before Apartheid, full of people of multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds living in harmony. When Apartheid began, the government ordered District Six to be a whites-only area and ended up bulldozing most of the land. The museum was started in 1994 as a memorial to the 60,000 people that were displaced from District Six during Apartheid. It occupies an old church and, in addition to describing the history of District Six, is filled with hundreds of personal accounts and pictures of life in District Six.

After the District Six Museum we walked to an Ethiopian restaurant for lunch. I'll let the pictures below show you how much we liked our food.

With our bellies full of Ethiopian food, we boarded the HOHO bus and took it to Kristenbosch Botanical Garden. The botanical gardens are beautiful and we strolled around them for an hour. We were especially fond of the shaded tree canopy because trees are cool and it was very hot outside but nice and cool under the canopy. It turns out that there is a live concert there tonight and they were busy rehearsing, but tickets are sold out so we couldn't stay for it.

We hopped back on the HOHO bus and took the scenic route back to Cape Town, making our way through Constantia, Hout Bay, Bakoven, and Camps Bay before returning to Cape Town. Our HOHO ticket came with a harbor cruise, so we took a quick cruise around the harbor before returning to our AirBnB. We learned quite a bit about the harbor and its history, and made some seal friends along the way.