Table Mountain and wineries


Last night we met our tour leader, Katia, and the other members of our travel group – 15 in all. All or Australians except our friends Jim and Cheryl and we are already getting along fine.


This morning we took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain. We had heard that you had to be very lucky with the weather as the mountain is usually covered with cloud, known as the ‘table cloth’. But we were blessed with the clearest, sunniest day you can imagine so we were able to enjoy the spectacular views and take the photos to prove it – as you will see below. We’ll let the photos speak for themselves.


In the afternoon we headed north of Cape Town to the wineries. We visited two wineries for wine tasting – which was great for the wine lovers – but the most interesting part for us was seeing the townships on the way. The government has clearly done a lot to remove slums and build better housing for the poor, but a hell of a lot more needs to be done! We saw many large townships that consisted almost entirely of sheet metal shacks crammed together with no facilities or basic infrastructure to speak of. Oddly enough most had satellite dishes as TV is their only form of entertainment.


We ate at a classy restaurant tonight that serves local delicacies. Phil ate springbok with salad – delicious!
Tomorrow we travel down to the Cape to see the colonies of penguins and seals. Should be fascinating.

 Photos:

 The order in which I uploaded the photos is a bit messy. The sixth photo is the view from our hotel window. The fourth photo is the cable car. The fifth photo is of a township. The seventh photo is the mountain seen from the highway.  The last photo is of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, as seen from the mountain. The rest are views from the top of the mountain.






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