Cape Town!

We got to Cape Town on October 30th and boy were we astounded at its beauty! This trip to South Africa was brought on by a need to go to Human Affairs in Cape Town to get an extension on our travel visas. Since we had to drive so far to do all this, we decided to make a trip out of it! We stayed in Cape Town for 6 days and we filled up every day!
Day 1
First we went to a community market in the heart of the city. We picked up a few cool things and then met up with our good friend Stewart Jackson (met him in Swaziland, from Scotland) for a lunch and some beach time. We also traveled around to some of the famous wine estates in the valleys around Cape Town.
Day 2
we hiked the famous Skeleton Gorge up to the highest point on Table Mountain. This was quite a strenuous hike, but it was so worth it! We hiked up a waterfall for the majority of the trip which made it pretty slick, but provided awesome views. While coming down from the summit, we decided to jog down. This wasn't one of our finest ideas as our joints were hurting pretty bad by about the midpoint. We tried to do a bit of recovering by sitting in the Kirstenbosch Gardens on the side of Table Mountain. These gardens are considered the finest gardens in the whole of Africa. They span a massive area and provide excellent views of the mountain range while giving its visitors the fabulous sense of peace and tranquility. The flora and fauna of this place was breathtaking! We ended the night with a great meal in downtown Cape Town.
Day 3
We got up at 5am in to get to Human Affairs really early so it wouldn't kill the rest of our day. This was not fun! We waited from 6am till 7am until the doors opened got in at the front of the queue and after R450 in money spent to get a new visa we found out that we would have to come back in two days and do this all over again to get a paper that would let us travel legally throughout the country while we waited for our new visas. The rest of the day was spent driving down to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. This was an amazing trip just stopping by this little sleepy towns, getting coffee on the waterfront, and finally, getting to our destination at the bottom of the continent!

Day 4 We spent this day on the beach (or on quiet a few beaches actually) then for some awesome ice cream. This was our day spent nursing our aching bodies after our hike up Table Mountain.

Day 5 This day was used to visit some of the downtown areas including the District 6 Museum (famous for the struggles during Apartheid). At 4pm we met at the Cape Town Royal Yacht Club because we had been invited to crew a 42ft sailing yacht in an evening Competition Regatta in the Atlantic Ocean. This was so awesome! Our jobs included manning the ropes when tacking, watching for points on the horizon-line for positioning and directionality and moving from one side to the other to ballast the boat. We didn't come in first, but thankfully we didn't come in last! I haven't had so much fun in a long time! Grace, Stewart and I were on one boat while Brad and Eric were asked to help crew on another boat due the some of that boats crew missing a few members.

Day 6 We went back to the Human Affairs office to get some paperwork then we were off to Hermanus, a small town on the cliff sides overlooking the ocean. A great place for whale watching!

More to come soon!
Ben