Scenes from Cape Point

Today, I spent the day with Ryan from the Apple Store (who will heretofore be known only as Ryan) driving out to the Cape of Good Hope. You can see our route on the map below, from Plumstead (mid-peninsula) to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope at the lower extreme.


Baboons appear in the wild around Cape Point. They are known to be aggressive toward humans because many tourists feed them. The baboon pictured above has somehow commandeered a plastic container full of snacks, and below, baboons circle and attack an SUV likely because the people inside are eating. Note the baboon perched on the spare tire.


Ostriches also appear in the wild around Cape Point. They are not at all uncommon in South Africa, and as we were driving along the peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope, I was gawking and taking pictures of the ostriches while Ryan was snacking on ostrich biltong (the equivalent of ostrich jerky).

The Cape of Good Hope is part of Table Mountain National Park, and access to the long and winding road down the coast was a surprising 55 rand per person (about $8). The drive was beautiful, and we arrived just as a heavy mist was descending on the peninsula, obscuring views in all directions. It gave the whole place a very mysterious feel in spite of the busloads of tourists being herded through the area who seemed to represent every country on the planet.

Here I am perched on an outcropping of the Cape of Good Hope.

These Dutch tourists asked me to memorialize their moment at the Cape. We spoke a little bit of German, then they hiked up that long path in the background.



Ryan and I had to wait about twenty minutes to get the undivided attention of this sign. It is a very popular photo opportunity among tourists from Japan wearing high heels.

After we took our fill of photos at Cape Point, Ryan and I headed to downtown Cape Town for dinner. We ended up at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. This appears to be both a district and also the biggest mall you have ever seen. It is situated along Cape Town's waterfront, and you can see this in the background in the photo above. We walked around the mall for awhile, then had dinner at Balthazar, a fancy steak restaurant on the water. Next we went to the grocery store. [As a side note, I maintain that it is completely ridiculous for a grocery store to be tacked on to a ritzy shopping mall. Furthermore, people should not be allowed to push grocery-store shopping carts around the mall. I think this is all wrong. Ryan finds it to be utterly convenient.]

Anyway, we went to Pick n' Pay so that Ryan could get a chocolate bar and something I can't remember the name of, which is basically pieces of dried bread in a box like cereal that you dip in your coffee or eat like cookies or something. Then I remembered my new love affair with muesli-plus-yogurt-plus-fruit, so I was going to try to find the makings of this bowlful of delight. I was thinking I would be spending a lot of time cutting up fruit, but lo and behold, this grocery store had a whole bar set up for muesli-plus-yogurt-plus-fruit! Everything you needed was right there, ready to go! So I started serving up muesli and yogurt and fruit into the little containers, and if I overloaded one and the lid wouldn't snap on, I just ate the fruit until it fit. Ryan was outraged at this. Ryan is a photographer in his other job, and since he was holding the camera, he set out to document this fresh-fruit larceny. A few store employees even stopped to watch me eating the fruit here and there, but no one did anything to stop me. It was really good.


Since we hadn't picked up a basket when we came in, I was looking around for somewhere to put all my fruit and muesli. I saw a crate down the aisle, so I grabbed it and loaded our stuff into it. Another heresy! I saw no reason why I couldn't use this crate to carry our consumables, but Ryan documented it with mock outrage nonetheless. It was altogether a brilliant time at Pick n' Pay. The whole days was brilliant, in fact, and I am so grateful to Ryan for taking time out to drive me the very long way to my little dream point on the surface of the earth. All my life I have wanted to set foot on the Cape of Good Hope, and today, I stood there, and the world was blurry and misty and right and good.

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