Cape Town – Day 4

Thursday, 22 May 2025

After the technical dramas of yesterday I am feeling more confident about continuing with the blogging. I have abandoned Word and the Cloud and I have returned to writing my travel diary in Pages which is what I used to use when I first started typing my travel diary rather than writing it. Bernie ‘thinks’ the problem was that there was a syncing issue between Word and OneDrive/the Cloud. He also ‘thinks’ that he has resolved this issue by re-syncing BUT I am going to stick with Pages for the moment because my confidence in the cyberspace technology has been severely shaken!

Finally, FINALLY, the rain has stopped. It is still cold but now only cloudy rather than foggy. With the weather app saying that the cloud should be clearing from about 10.00am we were very optimistic that today we would actually see Table Mountain and that it might even be clear when we took the cable car to the top??!

But first, we returned to the V&A City Sightseeing Tour Office to catch the red bus on the Red Route. The busses are all red, as they are throughout the world, but today the bus and the route were both red, ha, ha. This morning we took a slightly different route to the CBD City Sightseeing Tour Office where we alighted as it was the starting point for the Bo-Kaap Walking Tour scheduled for 10.00am.

With just over half an hour to fill in we decided to walk to the Castle of Good Hope for a couple of photos. It’s a castle right? Sounds impressive. After spending most of our time in the city around the V&A Waterfront this part of the city was a bit less ‘sanitised’. When I asked the staff member in the tour office about walking to the castle he confirmed that we had time but warned me to be careful with my camera in this part of the city. He said to make sure I kept it in front of me rather than letting it hang behind me.

Despite the warnings we found our way to the castle without any difficulty. This part of the city was vibrant with all the wares being sold in the street markets and we didn’t feel threatened at all, although there was a visible police presence on the streets. When we reached the castle it was quite the disappointment. Well, the part that we could see from outside was. Perhaps if we had had time to actually visit the castle it would have been more impressive inside its pentagonal wall?? At least the magnificent City Hall on our way to the castle made up for the castle’s general lack of grandeur.

Back at the tour office we met up with our walking tour guide, Maree January. Maree walked us up the hill for a brief introduction, including the reason that her surname is January. When slaves and skilled workers arrived in the new colony they were originally given a surname that indicated where they had come from. Later this naming convention was changed to being given a surname denoting the month of the year that your ship arrived in the colony. Maree’s forebears therefore arrived in Cape Town in January.

Maree also explained the complex cultural/religious mix that originally made up the Bo-Kaap district with the area settled by immigrants from other African and Asian countries. The main religion is Islam due to the number of immigrants that arrived from Malaysia. The district remains mainly Islamic with many mosques featuring in its streets however, the district’s proximity to the CBD makes it very desirable and the traditional residents are fighting the gentrification of the area.

In the meantime the colourful houses for which it is renowned remain, making it a vibrant part of the city to visit. The true reason for the colourful houses is lost in history but Maree told us various theories ranging from painting their houses to celebrate the end of slavery through to using paint colour to identify the profession of the occupants. Maree also bought us koesister donuts to try. These are ball shaped, dipped in syrup and rolled in coconut. What a sugar hit! Apparently everyone eats a healthy breakfast all week but it is traditional to have koesister for breakfast on Sunday.

At the end of our ‘Free’ walking tour it was time to stress out over what we should tip Maree. We have no problem paying for an entertaining and informative tour but would prefer that it was priced so that we didn’t have to try to work out the right amount to pay! Especially since she had seemingly organised for the sun to shine for us today. Maree had returned us to the tour office where we planned to continue with the Red Route to travel to the cable car station on Table Mountain. Although the sun was shining in the city and the lower slopes were visible, the summit remaining shrouded in cloud as we drove up the flank of the mountain.

We hopped off the bus at the at Stop 7 and left Bernie in the cable car ticket queue while the rest of us found the rest rooms. With our tickets in hand we climbed the stairs to the lower cable car station. It was not busy this morning so Bernie only queued for a short time for our tickets although he did have to suffer a rude fellow who shamelessly queue jumped. We were able to board the car almost straight away and said queue jumper barged in and made sure that he secured the front position in the car … of course!

I think the attendant said the car holds 65 people so these are large cable cars. As we started moving out of the station we were told to move away from the edges and to not hold onto the silver railing because … the floor of the cable car is going to rotate. So queue jumper guy only spent a short part of the ride at the front of the car. We thought this was perfect karma!

We arrived at the cable car station at the top of Table Mountain and we found ourselves in the fog that continues to shroud the top of the mountain despite the sun shining today. The problem with mountains is that they create their own microclimate and usually it’s a wet and cloudy one! We pressed on regardless and walked around to the viewing areas that look back down over the city.

We couldn’t see down to the harbour but there were some hyraxes sitting on the rocks so at least there was something to see. We were also bemused by all the warning signs: Do Not Jump From The Rocks, Do Not Climb On The Rocks and Do Not Sit On The Rock Walls. And if we had been feeling like an adrenaline rush we could have paid for an abseiling experience. Bernie asked how far you could abseil and was told it was 120 metres but he didn’t give it a go. Occasionally a small sliver towards the west coast was revealed to us but the majority of the peak was fogged in.

We went to the TEN67 Eatery to have some lunch thinking the fog might burn off some more while we were eating. The offerings today reinforced what we have found to be a general rule of catering – if a venue is offering an amazing view it tends not to sell great food. Our choices were limited to packaged sandwiches, burgers and pizza.

The burger section of the menu was offering a boerewors sausage in a roll with onions and mustard. Thinking of the juicy sausages sold by food trucks in various cities in Germany three of us ordered those and one ordered a cheese burger. When our food arrived it was very disappointing. The boerewors sausage was thin and dry and not at all appetizing and … the cheese burger was a bust too.

After lunch we headed back out into the fog. There is a ‘Twelve Apostles’ viewing point but we didn’t even bother walking out that track because we figured that we were not going to be seeing anymore of those particular geological features from the mountain side than we did from the seaward side yesterday. Very disappointing.

We rode back down the mountain and into the sunshine. We really cannot complain because the weather IS so much better than it has been for the last three days – just not on top of the mountain. Besides we had a ride in a cable car that had a floor that rotated. We’ve never done that before! We were able to board a red route bus straight away when we arrived back at the lower station, to continue on the red route back into the city. The red route joins the blue route at Camps Bay so once again we found ourselves travelling north along Victoria Road. And, finally, the cloud over the mountain was clearing and we actually saw the seaward side of the buttresses that are nicknamed the ‘Twelve Apostles’ … even though there are 18 of them.

When we disembarked near the waterfront area we walked to the section of the harbour that looks towards Table Mountain to find that the cloud had cleared dramatically since we left the top. It was still clinging to the area around the cable car station on the top but the rest of the mountain was visible. Thank goodness we didn’t have to leave Cape Town without ever having seen its famous mountain rearing behind it.

After a couple of hours back in our room we were off out again to do the City Sightseeing Sunset Bus that takes tourists to Signal Hill to watch the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. When we arrived at the top of Signal Hill it was – never mind the sunset look how clear it is over Table Mountain!! Wow, when it can be seen clearly it really is spectacular. We had enough time before the sun set to take photographs of the mountain which was 100% visible from Lion’s Head to Devil’s Peak and basking in the late afternoon sun. Fabulous!

We then settled in to wait for the sunset. As per usual I was looking for something to silhouette against the sky to add some interest to my sunset shot. Unfortunately, Signal Hill is pretty scrubby so I had to settle for a rather straggly looking specimen. I’m sure there would have been better options but, with the bus scheduled to depart almost immediately after the sun set, we did not want to venture too far from the car park.

Back in the city we dropped a few items off in our hotel rooms before going back to the waterfront for dinner. Tonight we made our way to Quay 4 another restaurant on the list that the Concierge gave us on our first day. It has not been our day for food today! Well, actually, the food at Quay 4 was fine but the service was terrible.

We returned to our rooms and started re-packing our bags ready for our flight to Namibia in the morning to commence our Tour of Namibia, Botswana and Victoria Falls with Bunnik Tours. We have our fingers crossed for some warmer weather.

Steps: 15,833 (10.67kms)