Our adventures today are taking us to a place I never dreamed I’d get to..ok, I know I’ve said that before, but it’s true! Who ever thought that Ron and I would be standing at the Cape of Good Hope? Or Cape Point (which is further south still)? It’s not quite the southernmost tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas – that’s about 2 hours drive south east of us, but it is the most south westerly part, and it is where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet.
Keith and Gill are coming with us – bless them, they want to do the driving so we can see the scenery – I think that, after a busy Holy Week, it’s a good excuse for a day out too! And there’s so much to see..we go out through little towns, whose names we know, but we know very little about them, apart from Simons town, which we knew was a British Naval base for many years. We’re able to stop and take more photos (!) of beautiful coastal scenery – somehow two coasts never look the same . Our route goes out through Muizenberg, Fish Hoek, GlenCairn and Simons Town before entering the Table Mountain National Part. This isn’t a game reserve as such, but being a protected area, we may see Baboons (a local nuisance!), Zebra, Ostrich etc.
On the way we stop at a local semi precious stone factory known as the “Scratch Patch”. Apart from all the beautiful pictures, models, jewellery etc that we’ve seen before, the “scratch Patch” is a concreted area, designed to look like a rock cave. The floor of this is covered inches deep in polished semi precious stones! You take you little plastic bag in, root around on the floor to find your special choice, and fill the bag with as many as you can cram in! Tigers eye, amethyst, turquoise and many, many others. Great fun! When Harry and Mia are a bit bigger, Grandad’s and Grandma’s “pretty stones” may be fun to play with!
The National Park (19140 acres) is home to more plant species than are indigenous to Great Britain. Phew! We see proteas among many others that M usually pays a fortune for back home!!
The Zebra prove elusive, but we do have “close encounters” with the baboons – doors and windows locked of course as the big males are quite capable of opening the doors and getting inside your car to look for food! We also saw ostrich, Cape Lizards and red winged starlings. These are amazing birds – not to mention the fact that they too are a nuisance, being quite capable of removing your sandwich from your hands if you let them! They look like small, rather boring black birds, until they take to the wing, when you get these incredible flashes of livid scarlet, as all bar the top edge of their wings is this colour. Cape Point is very dramatic – crashing seas from both sides on the rocks below being the graveyard for many a ship – including the Lusitania in 1911. It is now protected by two lighthouses, one at the top of the cliff and one lower down. The Cape of Good Hope is less dramatic, being further north and not so exposed to the two oceans maelstrom. It’s interesting that different sea explorers have given it other names – Cape of storms being one of them; you suspect that the name has something to do with the sea conditions at the time of arrival!
The bay to the east of Cape Point is known as “False Bay” because sailors went into it, thinking it was the tip of Africa and that they were now on their way to India! Sadly they had to brave the seas for some distance further to round Cape Agulhas to be in that happy position.
Having explored the east coast of Cape Point on the way down, we return by the West Coast through Scarborough, Kommetjie, and cross Chapman Peak to Hout Bay and then via Llandudno and Clifton to Signal Hill above Cape Town .It’s amazing how many British names we’ve seen all round the world – we’re not too sure if that’s lack of imagination or pride in your homeland! Hopefully the latter!
The road across Chapman’s Peak is supposed to be one of the world’s most scenic drives, being carved out of a sheer rock face 600 metres above the crashing waves. It has been in existence for some 70 years as it was originally made by Italian prisoners of war. Recently the road has been closed for 18 months while reinforcing work is done, and rock guards are put on the hillsides above the roadway to protect the cars from rock fall. You’re told that you “travel this road at your own risk” Oooo..er...perhaps you can see why in the picture above!
Arriving at Signal Hill, we get a really good view across Cape Town, and we’re also looking straight down at the new Soccer Stadium that’s been built for the World Cup. Sadly they’ve built it way out of the city, far from the townships. Who are the greatest soccer fans? - the black people. Will the planners never learn? Local concerns are as to how these folk will find the money to get there with the unemployment as high as it is, there is a worry that crime will increase still further.
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