April 10th, 2024

We arrived in Cape Town as planned and on time. When our sister ship was here a few days ago they could not get into the harbor due to high winds and spent over 6 hours in the bay waiting for the wind to die down. Luckily they were there overnight so they did get to see Cape Town.

Cape Town has a huge flat mountain that dominates the view of Cape Town.

This is from our balcony and they call the cloud cover the “table cloth” since it covers the flat top. There is a cable car that goes to the top but it is rare that you can see anything due to the cloud cover.

We had chosen and all day tour called Cape Peninsula and Cape Point. We had a great guide with us and the only negative was that there was that with the time had we could not do a tour of Cape Town.

This was one of the scenic stops they made along the way. You can see the small village that is sheltered on the opposite side under the mountain peak.

Cape Town is known for their white sand beaches but most of the year the water is to cold to swim in.

Along the ride we saw lots of baboons on the side of the road. They are a real nuisance here and people who can afford it put up electrical fences along their property to deter the baboons.

Out of the back window of the bus you can see how many baboons there were

Along the ride to Cape Point we saw ostriches down by the beach.

We went to the southern/western point of the continent of Africa. Not much to do here except get your picture taken with the sign.

Proof that we were here.

There was a fur seal colony here and you could see them all out on the rocks.

Fur seals

There was also a gannet colony

Gannet up close Fur seal

The next stop was to the top of Cape Point and you took a quick funicular ride to the top and then you could climb up to the light house.

Pristine beach that no one can get to

Views from the top

It was 152 steps up to the light house

Off the point there is submerged rock that is responsible for a ship wreck back in 1911.

The color of the water

On our way back down from the lighthouse.

Where we are on google maps

After Cape Point we headed to a restaurant for lunch and had a nice lunch right on the beach.

A view from our lunch stop

The next stop was the African Penguin colony. They are endangered. You walked along a board walk to the beach and saw lots of penguins.

The entrance to the penguins

The penguins have black dots on their front and no 2 are the same. That is how they keep track of them.

More penguins

A baby who has not shed yet A juvenile learning to swim

On the beach Love the giant boulders

Penguin Beach

We spent about an hour with the penguins and than we were off to the botanical gardens for a quick walkthrough.

More views along the way

This is looking out the back window of the bus and how they secure the roads from erosion and falling boulders.

Some plants from the botanic garden. They say you need multiple days to see the whole thing and they also have an endangered section where they are trying to grow and protect plants that are on the verge of extinction.

I did get some more bird picture

Not sure what these birds are. I have to ask the wildlife expert on board The geese is a Egyptian geese

Gray Ibis guinea fowl

After the botanic garden it was back to the port since we had to be through immigration by 5:30 pm.

They had art work representing Reverend Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandella

We made it back to the ship and I went up to take some pictures of the port before sunset and it was very windy. I was thinking that it was going to be very hard to get out of port and that was when the Captain announced that we would not be leaving that night and would try again in the am. Also since we had gone through immigration and had our passports stamped as exiting the country we could not get off the boat.

We have a day at sea before our next stop in Luderitz, Namibia.