Around Table Mountain & Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden

Friday, January 1, 2016

The alarm clock goes off at 8:00 a.m. and at 9:00 a.m. we start walking towards Bree Street to find something for breakfast. We walk past closed shops and restaurants for a long time and only find a very nice café with great sandwiches late in the Long Street at the tourist info and the office of the hop-on-hop-off bus. Around the corner there is a small market, the Greenmarket. All kinds of souvenirs, food, music - nice to pass the time until the bus departs.

So we stay here, buy a 1-day ticket for the hop-on-hop-off bus and get on the Blue Route, which goes around Table Mountain and is the longest of the 3 routes, taking 2.5 hours. We enjoy the wind, sun, and views of hills, open spaces, the sea, and soon many trees, vineyards, typical Cape Dutch houses, and many trees that remind me of New Zealand. Here too, these are podocarps / stone oaks, which typically only have leaves high up and have a scaly trunk.

But we also pass by one of the many townships. You can get off here and join a guided tour.

We pass places by the water where people lie on the beach and see the "back" of Table Mountain, which is not flat at all there, but very rugged.

These pinnacles are called the 12 Apostles, although there are clearly more than 12. Incredibly beautiful coastal sections with huge beaches follow as a pretty fresh wind hits us from the sea.

Noble places that cling to the slopes alternate with ugly architectural sins. But whoever lives here always has a free view of the sea.

He just shouldn't look around in the stone desert of ugly houses. In Camps Bay we get stuck in traffic and thousands of black people are celebrating New Year's here today. Traditionally, on this day, black people go to Camps Bay to enjoy the beach and have a picnic. They have stretched their blankets, towels, and grills out as far as the sidewalk. That must be pretty uncomfortable, but the crowds are impressive.

In front of us is Lions Head, which looks like a hood.

We are soon back at the V&A Waterfront and stay on our bus to now practically take the same tour again with our ticket - with a break at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden.

We are in for 55 Rand admission plus 5 Rand for a German map with explanations and we start walking, while it gets cloudy and you can see that both of us have a bad sunburn from the busride on the open deck. So, apply some more sunscreen and keep walking. Here in the Botanical Garden, people are lying on the grass, children are playing - it's nice. Hardly anything is fenced off, it feels more like a park than a botanical garden.

Protea

South Africa's national flower is the Protea. There are several different varieties growing here. We walk to the Tree Canopy Walk, which is short and disappointing though.

Tree Canopy Walk

Turkey-like birds walk among the people lying in the grass. A leisurely turtle is the only wild animal we see here for now. It sits in a nice sculpture park, which is part of the botanical garden.

In the Smell Garden, we can smell some herbs, leaves, etc. and then we have to get back to the bus, because the last Blue Route departs from here at around 4:00 p.m. and if you miss it, you're stuck here. We try to get a taxi (which would take 15 minutes to downtown Cape Town), but fail. Calling one also doesn't work.

So all that's left is the bus - and another 2-hour drive around Table Mountain. Because the hop-on-hop-off bus only goes in one direction and the stop at Kirstenbosch with the botanical garden is 20 minutes behind the start of the full loop...

The wind is occasionally brutally cold as we drive along the coast and we don't have anything warm with us. We arrive at the waterfront at 6:00 p.m. and struggle to find a table in one of the many restaurants. Since this is not successful, we sit in the Ferris wheel for a few rounds. Beautiful views.