Cape Town!

I had to break the rules as we landed in Cape Town. I saw Table Mountain out the window and has to turn my camera on to snap a photo.

We arrived and were the first in the 'other passports' queue. Score a point for the Cape Town airport. We collected our bags and hopped on the myciti bus to the civic centre where we met Sarietha. She took us to her loft, packed some champagne and drove us to Signal Hill for the sunset.

After sunset we had dinner at Royale Burger, where we randomly happened upon one of Sarietha's friends who then joined us for dinner. 

Soon after dinner I promptly passed out, all the 5am starts had caught up with me.

The next morning Sarietha dropped us off at the waterfront where we bought tickets for Robben Island and picked up the hop on hop off blue line bus. Sarietha had circled all of the stops where a hop off would be nice. She even packed us snacks because our drop off of 3 loads of laundry at the laundromat took longer than expected - how sweet!

First stop was Kirenbosch botanical gardens - with only indigenous South African plants.

Second stop was the wine tour bus, but due to everything we had to get done we just walked to the first winery, Beau Constania. We did a wine tasting - white, rose, red, and their two award winning reds. Those two were amazing. We bought the Lucca (named after the family's daughter) as a gift for the parents of a friend we were going to stay with a few days later and hopped back on the bus.

We stopped off at Hout Bay and had Hout Bay chowder, mussels, and calaprawnia.. Prawns and calamari. It was all really nice. Back on the bus we drove up the coast back toward the waterfront. It is a really amazing coastline.

After the bus tour we boarded the 3pm ferry to Robben Island for the tour. I was expecting an Alcatraz type island, but the island is so big that you take a bus around it. It held not only political prisoners, but common law criminals and a leper colony as well.

Our guide for the maximum security prison was Jama, a political prisoner for 5 years from 1977 to 1982.

After 3 hours we were back on the ferry heading to the waterfront again. Sarietha made reservations at Sevruga, as Mo and I really wanted some good sushi. Her friend Carla joined us for dinner. The sushi was really nice, and of course I had ordered too much, but managed to eat all but one piece.

The next morning we got dropped at the car rental place to do some exploring on our own!