The Wandering Chocoholic

Back on the tourist bus

Today I jumped on a day tour of the Cape Peninsula. I woke up this morning to cloudy, somewhat drizzly cool weather, and boarded a minivan where, along with an Australian couple, an Irish girl, an Austrian girl, a German couple and two American college students, I spent the day exploring the highlights of the most southwesterly part of the African continent.

The morning started out with a stop at the harbour of a town called Hout Bay. Notable for a tourist gimmick started up by some enterprising folks in the 1980s who declared it to be its own republic and started issuing passports. To this day, tourists can go get their Hout Bay passport stamped by the tourist office. Or, as we did, they can simply hang around the harbour for an hour or so and browse at the shops. The town itself is probably quite interesting, but the harbour is your typical tourist trap, used by buses on their way down to the peninsula, complete with the ubiquitous African roadside markets full of people selling the sort of trinkets you’d expect to see. I’ve resigned myself somewhat to the fact that I’m a tourist here, not a traveler as I prefer to be. Anytime you sign on to tours, this sort of thing is to be expected. I did cheer myself up with an excellent scone with jam and cream at the coffee shop, mind you.

And once again, it’s … penguins

We next headed down the east coast of the peninsula to a town called Simon’s Town, a place notable for two things: A naval base, and… penguins! Yep, I’ve now seen penguins on three continents: Oceania, South America, and now Africa. Hundreds of cute little African penguins have a colony at Boulder, and we spent some time just watching them nest, play, swim, bodysurf and chill out. Penguins never cease to be fascinating and adorable, as far as I’m concerned. Do you think I could adopt one as a pet? It could live in my bathtub.

The Cape of Good Hope

Even though it would be hard to top seeing penguins, I was eager to get to the reason I took this tour: Cape Point. The most southwesterly tip of Africa, Cape Point was long thought to be the meeting point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. People would flock to the spot where they could dip a toe in two oceans at once. Well, oops: It turns out the real spot is about 100km to the east at Cape Agulhus. Nonetheless, tourists flock to Cape Point for its symbolic value, since it really is the furthest you can go without coming back again and feels like the end of the earth. Luckily, it’s low season (again, why?) so the whole area was relatively quiet.

Upon entering the national park conservation area, we boarded rickety, wobbly bikes to do a short bike ride to the point. It was quite scenic, and it was nice to get a little exercise as opposed to sitting on a bus all day. We had a picnic lunch at the visitors’ centre.

After lunch, we walked up to the lighthouse to see the peninsula and bay from three sides. It was really quite a stunning view. The lighthouse itself isn’t open to the public, but you can see it from outside and it stands as a landmark of Cape Point. It’s amazing to think that two years ago, when I stood at the lighthouse at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, a mere 11,640 kilometers away, it was the same Atlantic Ocean that reaches this spot. That really blows my mind.

We headed down from the lighthouse after taking about a zillion photos, and then hiked the 45 minutes or so across to the Cape of Good Hope. The hike was rocky and a bit windy, but we had practically the entire hiking trail to ourselves. The cliffs rise dramatically from the ocean. If you can imagine a clear enough day and a powerful enough scope, from where I was standing I could see right through to Antarctica. (And Sarah Palin can see Russia from her backyard. But I digress.)

We headed right up to the very top to take photos at the edge of the cliffs, and no, nobody fell over or anything. After that, we headed back down to the road, where we were standing at the most southwesterly part of the continent — there’s a sign to prove it so it must be true — before getting back on the bus to head back to Cape Town. On the way, we saw some wildlife, including some ostriches and some bontebok. And as we approached Cape Town, the sun was starting to set over Table Mountain and the view was really spectacular.

Back to town

I met up with Aine from Ireland and Birgit from Austria, two of the women on today’s day tour, for a dinner of burgers and fries on Long Street. All that cycling, hiking and penguin-viewing really worked up an appetite! The food was delicious and well appreciated after a long day.

On the way back from dinner, I had a taxi driver try to tell me that his meter was ‘broken’ and that there was an 100-rand minimum. Yeah, try the next idiot, jerk. I refused his ride, of course, and called for a taxi from a more reliable company, and it was no big deal or anything. But this sort of thing is really not helpful to the tourism industry. Yes, it happens all over the world, and yes, it’s nearly impossible to crack down on or completely eliminate. But it just really gets my goat, because people probably fall for it all the time. Anyway, it wasn’t going to put a damper on my full stomach or my excellent day.

Back at the hostel, I spent some time checking emails and sorting out some practical details, and then chatted with a guy from Johannesburg who’s been staying here while he works on theatrical productions with a local company. He’s only 21 years old and he speaks 13 languages fluently. And the best part is, he doesn’t seem to find that in the least bit unusual. Meanwhile in Montreal, we get our panties in a twist over the use of English as well as French. Go figure.

Sleep now. More stories soon.