Cape Town!

The last weekend in February I went to Cape Town!  We took Thursday and Friday off from work and made a long weekend out of it.  Cape Town is hands down one of the most beautiful places I have ever been!  We rented an apartment in Campus Bay (a area of the city which is right on the water).

 

The view from the living room!

 The apartment overlooked the beach and even have a roof top deck with a jacuzzi!  (Unfortunately the winds on the roof were unbelievably strong and the water in the jacuzzi never got hot, but we did not let that stop us!).

  We began our weekend with a trip to Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 of his 27 years). We took a 45 min ferry ride out to the island (it is only 12 km away but the boat was slow) on one of the boats that use to take prisoners to the island.  We were given a tour of the prison by an ex political prisoner who was there from 1980 to 1991.  The prison is very bleak and the way they treated the prisoners horrendous.  Below is a picture of Nelson Mandela's cell, barely enough room to move around and he was kept in it almost 23 hrs a day for much of his time there.

The next day we took a drive down the coast to Cape Point.  The views were unbelievably beautiful. 

 

Then we went to Simon's Beach to see the penguins.  So funny to see penguins not on ice!  These are African Penguins, but I guess they still like freezing cold water because the water was insanely cold! This one is braying (the mating call which really sounds like a donkey - it is for this reason that they are called "jackass penguins").

The next day we took the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain and enjoyed walking around the top where we got to see views of the whole city and the ocean including an aerial view of Robben Island.

 

We finished off a great weekend with a wine tasting at Delaire Estate.  Unfortunately it is harvesting season so they do not allow wine tours but we still got to taste several of their wines and enjoy more gorgeous views! 

I spent last week in Serowe and I am about to leave for another week there.  Next Saturday my parents and brother arrive for safari!  Will be sure to post some pictures upon our return!
I'm experimenting with the slideshow feature so I have tried to create one of the trip to Cape Town below (not sure how to make it only show some of the photos so be sure to skip around as there are 374! sorry ;)  Not sure if it will work but here goes: