We had a free day before we started our official G Adventures tour. We only had reservations for lunch so the day was pretty free. We started with the complimentary breakfast provided by our hotel. As far as hotel breakfasts go, this wasn’t bad, there was a selection of cold cuts, fruit, cereals, juices and hot plates that included hash browns, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, and assorted veggies. There was also a made to order omelette station which made for a very filling breakfast.
We decided to set out to visit a local Crossfit “box” (Gym) after breakfast. Muscles has tried to visit a local Crossfit every time he travels and found Cape Crossfit within walking distance from our hotel. It was a leisurely 30 minute stroll which coincidentally took us in front of the South African parliament building and a few other plazas that were nice to walk through. Muscles was able to pick up one of their T-shirts and were given some great recommendations for places to visit as well. It was a short morning because we had to make our way back to the hotel to meet a car we had arranged to take us to lunch.
Prior to our trip Gimpy and I had wanted to have a meal at a “nicer” restaurant and so she made reservations at La Columbe. It was a 45 minute drive from our hotel and would have been uneventful except for the very minor fender bender we got into. We had stopped at a traffic circle and was admiring a road side fruit stand when our driver let the break go and rolled into the car in front of us. No one was hurt, but it did delay our arrival at La Columbe by a few minutes and our driver was a bit rattled afterwards.
Once we arrived at La Columbe though, we were all focused on the meal to be had. La Columbe is a restaurant nestled on the side of a hill in the Silvermist wine estate and it overlooks a vineyard. It was a seven course meal with the option of a wine pairing or a premium pairing. Muscles chose the standard pairing and I opted for the premium pairing, this allowed us to sample all the wines and we weren’t disappointed! Overall it was an excellent meal and we were all very happy we had a chance to do it. (I’ll order the gallery and add captions once I have a more stable internet connection)
We didn’t expect the lunch to run as long as it did, by the time we arrived home from lunch it was already 4PM. There wasn’t much time to do anything significant before our first scheduled meet with the G Adventure CEO (Chief Experience Officer aka our guide for the Cape Town portion of the tour) to go through a brief orientation and introduction of what we’re to expect. We chilled at the hotel for a bit before heading down to the hotel bar for the meet. We got to meet our professor friends from the airport transfer and quickly became reacquainted. Our CEO was a lovely lady named Gail who went through what we were going to do over the next few days, collected some insurance and ticketing information and then invited us to dinner at a local restaurant called Arnolds. It had a good selection of local dishes. We had organic kudu billtong and wild berry camembert to start. Muscles and I shared a game platter which had samples of warthog, crocodile, ostrich and springbok. It was a great opportunity to get to know Gail and our travelling mates better. It was a lazy food filled day but we enjoyed it thoroughly!
The next day we needed to be ready in the lobby by 8am. This meant an early start and early breakfast, which with the help of some lingering jet lag, wasn’t too hard. We all boarded a small touring van called a Quantum. The first part of our tour consisted of a brief tour around central Cape Town. Gail shared some stories on the origins of Cape Town and took us to a few of the major landmarks including Castle of Good Hope, City Hall, and the Company Gardens. We then drove to a neighborhood in Cape Town called Bo-Kaap. It is known for its uniquely colorful buildings. We strolled around this area for a while before ending up at a local corner store where Gail introduced us to a local desert called Keoksisters.
The best way to describe it is a donuts without the hole, fried and glazed with coconut shavings. It was amazingly tasty. Leaving the center of Cape Town we made our way towards the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Normally on my trips I wouldn’t give botanical gardens a second look while planning, but because it was part of the G Adventures tour we went and I’m glad we did! Kirstenbosch is a garden planted on hundreds of hectares of land on the side of table mountain. We were fortunate to have been attended by an extremely knowledgeable and jovial guide named Andrew. We hiked halfway up the mountain, and were amazed at the views inside and from the Gardens overlooking Cape Town. The amount of plant life, from aloe to flowers to trees was impressive. We even had an opportunity to see a spotted eagle owl on a pretty open branch (which apparently isn’t very common)
After Kirstenbosch, we made our way to the Groot Constantia Winery Estate for lunch. The Constantia wine region is one of the first wine areas in South Africa. When we arrived we were treated to some amazing views of vineyards, water and mountains. We were able to sit outside in the sun and enjoy the views. We ordered two bottles of wine for the table (which were amazingly tasty) and I ordered a Malay tasting plate which included curried Lamb, Kudu and Chicken (Equally amazing!). We had a short amount of time here, but the vineyard was spectacular, was very relaxed and would be an awesome way to spend lazy afternoons!
With some food and wine in our bellies, we set out again towards the most south western tip of Africa (not most southern, that was further east!) towards the Cape of Good Hope. It was an hour of driving through mountains or by white sand beaches. If I haven’t said it already South Africa is an incredibly beautiful country! Arriving at the Cape of Good Hope, I feet very blessed to have had an opportunity to visit two out of the three “Great Capes” in the world (Cape Horn being the other from my Antarctica trip) It was incredibly windy, and I tried to get close to the point/water. At times it was just great to take in the beauty of creation and how amazing of a world we live in. Our group snapped some pictures and we piled back into our Quantum for the short 5 minute drive up to the Cape light house. We purchased our tickets for the tram that would take us up the rest of the way and we got some spectacular views of the cape and point from an elevated position! Being later in the afternoon the haze of the sun added to the beauty overlooking the landscape. Its really hard to describe how beautiful it was so hopefully the pictures in the gallery will do it some justice!
Sadly we had to go, and as hard as it was to leave we still had one more highly anticipated stop to make on our whirlwind adventure of the southern cape, Penguins! We had read that there were penguins in Africa so we were excited to see them. Having seen a “few” of then on my Antarctic trip I was happy to see the clumsy little guys again! We arrived Boulder Beach where we got to walk along a small boardwalk that would overlook the beach where most of the Penguins congregated. They were as cute as I remember and enjoyed this last leg of our long day tour.
We returned to our Hotel an hour later and our group disbanded for the evening. Gimpy, Muscles and I decided to head towards the V&A waterfront to try some Cape Town Seafood. We visited a restaurant named Baia and stocked up on muscles, limefish, squid and langoustines. All of it was great and it was a very satisfying meal.
We turned in for the night as we had another early start. We would be doing a day wine tour and all of us were very excited for that!
Gallery (Click on a thumbnail for a larger view)
[AFG_gallery id=’2′]
Ahhhh!! Penguins!!! And the food! And the view!