Woke up to beautiful clear weather – a nice side effect of a good rain storm. Word on the street says Table Mountain is more likely to be clear in the morning than later in the day, so I thought it would be best to start heading in that direction. The mountain has a flat table-like top and the clouds that cover it and roll off the side are known as the table cloth.
Like many cities around the world, Cape Town has a double decker red bus hop on hop off tour circuit (which are all owned by the same global company). Among its featured stops was the cable car station that whisks you up to the top of the mountain. South Africans have been gloating over the fact that Table Mountain was named one of the seven new wonders of the natural world last year. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, the only one that allows you to view a completely different UNESCO World Heritage site from it (namely Robbens Island).
The Table Mountain stop was number 13 on the bus tour circuit, so it took us a little while to get there. The circuit before then was very interesting and full of streets lined with beautiful colonial Dutch and British buildings. We also passed Desmond Tutu’s old church and an entirely wiped District Six neighbourhood that used to be occupied by black South Africans before they were cleared out during the Apartheid years. It remains deserted today and stands as a sort of memorial to those who once lived there.
The ride up to the top of Table Mountain was in a big revolving cable car that tested your fear of heights – especially when it got up near the top, 1000+ meters above sea level, where you could see the cliffs falling down off the other side. It was very spectacular to be on top and to look down on the city and beaches below. A ridge of mountains extended south of the top towards the peninsula known as The Cape of Good Hope. I hiked a circuit around the top to look off the various sides before heading back down to continue my bus tour. It was much colder up on top than it was 1000 meters below along the beaches.
Most of the rest of the bus tour took a circuit through a very expensive and exclusive series of beach neighbourhoods along the coast. All in all, Cape Town has proven to be a very beautiful city that must be among the most beautiful in the world!
