Day 14-16: Cape Town
Trip Start
Sep 12, 2004
1
6
57
Trip End
Jan 05, 2006
Cape Town,
South Africa
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
http://community.webshots.com/users/pauldwade
So Saturday evening came and I went for a few games of pool with Alex, and I was particularly shite, oh well...then off the the gay bars (Alex declined the offer...lol). Started at a place called Cafe Manhattan - not very busy but it was only about 10.30, only had the one drink there and then moved to Bronx which was much busier but still seemed quite quiet for a saturday night - plus not much talent which was very very disappointing. Considering the size of CT there aren't actually that many gay bars in town - there's another called On Broadway but it's more a restaurant with shows. So I was in bed by 12.30!! Madness!! I realised in the morning why it was quite - it's Pride weekend in Joburg so they'd all buggered off there!
Cape Town's famous Long Street
! Hopefully it'll be a bit busier this week when I'm staying closer to the bars.And got to my room only to discover that it was close enough to a cafe over the road to be able to hear the bassline quite clearly all night - until 4am, oh and then they opened again at 8am!!! So not a great nights sleep....then when I went to have a shower in the morning there was only lukewarm water. So after moving to Carnival Court I realised how shite it was. There was only one communal area and that was the bar where the barman decided he was gonna play his rock CDs as loud as he liked, so not very conducive to conversation....so luckily I managed to get a bed in the dorm at Cat and Moose again and moved back there...funnily enough the 2 guys staying in my dorm at Carnival Court also moved to C&M.
Sunday was a pretty quiet one, didn't get up until about 11 and then moved back to C&M. Went to the SA Musuem and Planetarium, never been to a Planetarium before - was quite cool actually. The SA Museum had some interesting exhibitions but it seemed a little disjointed, exhibitions just suddenly stopped and some were only half finished - some great whale displays tho. By the time I finished it was early evening so had something to eat and went back to the hostel.
On the rocks at Camps Bay
Got chatting to a nice aussie couple who are touring SA - Jeanette and Lee I thing (but never remember names), they're about to start off toward Joburg so gave them some ideas on where to go....then chilled out in the film room, some guys had started watching Goldmember. Got chatting to a guy called Aaron who'd been in SA for 3 months studying dolphins - he works for the Centre for Dolphin Studies in the UK - what a cool job! Interesting guy to talk to. Also had a brief chat with a guy called John from Canada who's also about to go off and travel round SA too.
Monday came and the weather had made a change for the better, the wind had disappeared and the clouds on the top of Table Mountain had also gone...so it was the perfect day to go up it. Walked to the lower cable car station which took and hour and was pretty steep, no was i was gonna climb the whole mountain. It would appear everyone else had the same idea about going up coz of the good weather - I had to queue for over an hour for the cable car!!!! Anyway, it was worth it when I got up - not so sure about the cable car journey, it was quite cool but it was a long long way down and we were dangling from a couple of wires!
The views from the top are spectacular as you would expect - crystal blue ocean as far as the eye can see
On top of Table Mountain
. It was difficult to get my bearings and work out what I was looking at, but it didn't matter coz it was all beautiful. THere are designated paths to walk along the top so followed those - loads of tourists as you'd expect but the further from the cable cars you went the quieter it got - at one point there was just me and it was soooo peaceful and quiet, no sounds at all! I walked to the highest point and back which took about an hour, overall I was wandering around for a good couple of hours, needed the exercise anyway.Annoyingly on the way down at about 3.30 there were no queues at all and the weather was still good, oh well, the weather can change so quickly you have to go as soon as it's clear, this morning (tues) there's cloud cover on the mountain again so you just don't know. Anyways, having only eaten breakfast and a banana all day I stopped off at a restaurant, then a net cafe to upload a load of pics to the webshots site, and then went back to the hostel at about 7. Just milled around in the evening, couple more games of pool and that was about it.
So it's Tuesday morning, I move to House of the Traveller today. I've booked a Winelands tour for Thursday so should be rat-arsed then, and Friday morning I'm doing a Township tour. Tomorrow is the Cape Peninsular tour which should be very cool...don't think I'm gonna get up to much today - just gotta move hostels and then might go to the Aquarium at the Waterfront - Aaron the Dolphin guy says it's very good so he should know....
That's it for now...
