Day 2 - Cape of Good Hope

After having trouble falling asleep because I was still so excited, I could hardly get out of bed this morning. It not only gets dark early here, but it also gets light late. It's a bit like autumn at home, even in terms of temperature. But we're really lucky with the weather here. Shorts and a t-shirt are no problem. I haven't needed a thick pajama yet.

After a delicious breakfast with everything your heart desires (although for me it was just fruit and a croissant), we went shopping for provisions for the journey (Aloe Vera pineapple water, bananas, and cereal bars) and then we had our car brought up. Here, we don't do anything ourselves. Everyone here has their mini job, and that includes bringing the tourists their cars from the underground garage. Actually, we finally found parking space D and thanks to the offline navigation, we quickly drove to Bakoven (oven) and from there along the coastal road towards the Cape. It's a beautiful route, right by the sea with sometimes steep rugged walls and a wonderful view of the mountains of Cape Town. We had to stop again and again to take photos and enjoy the view. South Africa is truly a beautiful place on earth! You can just enjoy it and be grateful that you are here and can experience something amazing. At the national park, we had to pay a small fee, then we took a short break at the visitor center and drove the last few kilometers to the Cape. One thing that keeps catching our attention is how friendly everyone is and how most people seem to have some kind of job. Even when the smallest work is being done on the road, it's not just the construction workers, but nice people who regulate the traffic by waving flags. We had that in Australia too. Must be a custom of people in the southern hemisphere. I think it's great. Everyone here has something to do. However, there are, of course, also those who walk and beg on the intersections in Cape Town between the cars waiting for the green light. Not nice. Overall, there are already some stark differences between the rich and the poor here. You can see that especially in the houses and cars. But maybe I'll talk more about that later. Anyway, we parked our car at the Cape's parking lot and took a great walk along the coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. Along the way, we could admire the interesting vegetation as well as smell and feel it, and a few dassies (rock hyraxes) also crossed our path. At first glance, dassies look like groundhogs, but on closer inspection, they actually look more like guinea pigs three times the size. They're really cute. When we arrived at the Cape, it was quite windy and also not entirely safe if you ventured too far over the rocks. But of course, we didn't do that, instead, we kept a safe distance from the steep cliffs and took endless photos and of course enjoyed the view. Back at the parking lot, we were supposed to go up to the lighthouse. But since we were pretty tired from our 2-hour tour to the Cape and back.... we took the little train that brought us up to the lighthouse. A bit lazy, but in hindsight, we were really glad we chose the train. There were also significantly more people here, so we didn't spend much time at the lighthouse, even though the view was fantastic.

From the Cape, we continued to Simon's Town. Penguins live on the beach here. We also got very close and were able to take a few photos of and with the adorable little creatures. Of course, there were also locals who urgently wanted to sell us something, so it's usually a bit exhausting to stop somewhere and look at something and enjoy it. But as I said, everyone has been very friendly so far and not too pushy.

Slowly but surely, we were all getting hungry. After all, we had only had breakfast and a cereal bar and a banana and it was already 5 PM. So we all agreed to drive back to Cape Town and to the beach in Camps Bay, where we had seen great restaurants from the bus the day before. The drive took longer than expected, and so we actually ended up at the restaurant just after 6 PM. I had a delicious local kingklip fish. It doesn't look soooo tasty in real life, for those who want to google it, but it's really recommended. It came with a medley of carrots and spinach. Great. Thanks to the restaurant's heaters, we were able to eat outside and watch the hustle and bustle on the street. Camps Bay is where a lot of wealthy people gather. There are chic bars with chic people inside and fancy cars parked outside everywhere. As I said, the contrasts here are extreme.

Back at the hotel, we had a nightcap and now I'm looking forward to closing my eyes.

Insight of the day:

Maybe I should take my ID and both of my driver's licenses (national and international) with me when I'm driving all day instead of leaving everything in the hotel safe. :-D

By the way, no one had any ID documents with them. We definitely have to remember that for the next trip.