14 May: Day Two in Cape Town

The site where our hotel is located used to be a prison and some of the bricks in the dining room are original from when it was a prison.

Today we have to get up early as we are being picked up between 730 and 7:45 for a City Tour – we have a tour of Table Mountain and the city. Plus it is Brett’s birthday.

We are lucky as today is not foggy or windy. At times you cannot get up to Table Mountain for 1-2 days at a time due to wind, and then other days you can’t see anything due to the fog.

There were 7 other people in total in our group. We spent two hours at Table Mountain which is part of the mountain range that Cape Town sits below. Table Mountain and the other mountains are older than the Himalayas.

Cable car to the top of Table Mountain

View over Cape Town waterfront from on top of Table Mountain. Robben Island out in the distance.

Table Mountain

We then went into the city to the common gardens where vegetables were grown for the early ships and then to an old area of housing fill of brightly coloured housing. At the common gardens there were lots of squirrels plus people trying to sell paintings, carved animals and pens, plus people carrying bags to collect your trash for a donation.

Cape Town. Bo-Kap

Bo-Kap

VOC Company Garden

We went to the Slave Museum which was quite challenging to think humans can treat other humans like they did. Harrowing tales of how men, women and children were treated and their total lack of rights.

After the tour we went to the waterfront for lunch. After lunch we looked around and bumped into a number of TDA tour riders, and then caught up with emails etc. Then we went out for Brett’s birthday dinner.

Serious business: Birthday lunch!

We had booked to go to Kloof Kitchen, it was really nice . Of course we ran into other TDA riders there (Fredrick and his girlfriend, Lorraine, Romy and Boulder).

The food at Kloof Kitchen was great, we had soup, baked camembert, lamb, steak, and a cheese board. Yum.