Cape Town

Cape Town is iconic, in many ways.  It's the cosmopolitan seaside city of South Africa, modern, chic, bustling.  It's the place - well, Robben Island, anyway, just outside the harbor - where Mandela spent years imprisoned and was released, which began the transition to democracy.  It's the site of the origins of the European colonization of Southern Africa, where the Portuguese set up a "refreshment" station in the 1600s for ships the carried on trade between Europe and Asia.

For us, Cape Town was a four-day sprint of a visit.  We arrived from the wine region and walked first down to the picturesque, if rather touristy, waterfront.

We took a short sail around the harbor to get a good look at the city and its stunning back drop: from left to right, Devils Peak, Table Mountain, Signal Hill (cannon goes off every day at exactly noon), and Lion's Head.

We spent a day on a tour to Cape Peninsula, the Cape of Good Hope, first "discovered" by the Portuguese.  It's an impressive rock ...

... with an impressive ecology.  In fact, the Cape and Table Mountain environments form one of the six floral kingdoms of our planet - and its smallest.

We visited a colony of Cape Fir seals. 

And a breeding colony of African penguins, cute little guys.  In the photo below, they're all facing one way because the strong winds would otherwise sandblast their eyes, as it did ours!

These guys look kind of dejected, don't they?  Breeding season blues, perhaps.

Our tour included some biking (fun, but remember the gale-force winds!)... 

During which we saw some awesome coastline. 

And we got to hike to the Cape, itself

Back in the city, we took a cable car up to the top of Table Mountain.  It's a very touristy thing to do, we waited in a long line to go up, but nonetheless, the views are fantastic.

The thing is, when it gets too windy - and it was VERY windy our whole time in Cape Town - they close the cable car.  Sure enough, after we had waited in that line, taken the cable car up, and walked around a bit, the very loud alarm sounded announcing things were closing down due to winds, and we got to wait in another long line to get down.  Fun times!