Cape Town and Cape Point

What a beautiful city!! Table Mountain and visiting Robben Island were the highlights of this trip. We had beautiful weather and therefore a beautiful view from Table Mountain. The above photo was taken en route back to Cape Town from Robben Island. We went to the Island to visit the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for seventeen years. As the tour books predicted, the 2.5 hour tour of the Island was woefully short. An ex-political prisoner took us on a tour of the interior of the prison and offered a very touching personal account of his life and time on the Island. We stood in Mandela's cell. Below is the window from his cell that looked out onto the courtyard of the prison.

Cape Town is much warmer than Johannesburg. We, well, it was actually my decision to walk to the cable car station on Table Mountain. Between the heat, steep slopes, and my chest cold, I was nearly dead by the time we reached the station. One bonus is that I actually happened upon "Rossiter Street" en route. I had come across "Rossiter Street" when I was searching the National Archives database in Pretoria. What are the chances?

We also toured the peninsula, the highlight being "Cape Point." The drive there provided us with incredible scenery - but was not for the weak of heart. The roads down to the Point crawled around cliffs and more than not, there was no guard rail. Thankfully, I was so full of cold medicine and cough syrup, my nerves were calmed for me. Above is Hout Bay, taken from the roadside.

At Cape Point, we crawled up to the look off at the light house. I say crawled, because the wind was so strong, we were literally hanging on for dear life at times, almost crawling up the seemingly endless stone steps to the lighthouse. Once there, we were rewarded with some spectacular views...