Today, we arrived at Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town is a beautiful city. We will be here all day today and tomorrow, until we depart this lovely city on Sunday afternoon.
We woke up fairly early this morning and had breakfast in the Lido Café. There were more passengers up there than usual since many passengers have tours, with many of the tours beginning in the morning. After breakfast, we worked out in the Fitness Center. Anne Marie worked out on the Treadmill while Keith worked out on the Elliptical Machine.
About an hour after we finished our workout, our ship docked in Cape Town. As soon as we cleared the local authorities, we disembarked the ship and walked over to the waterfront area. The waterfront area is beautiful. It contains hundreds of store, restaurants and many other areas such as an aquarium. We strolled around the area and plan to return tomorrow.
We went back to the ship at noon so that we could eat lunch back on the ship before it was time to go to our afternoon tour.
We took a tour in the afternoon called the Stellenbosch Sjjourn. There were only seventeen passengers on our tour. Cape Town is beautiful and in many ways reminds us ofSan Francisco, one of our favorite cities in the United States. After leaving Cape Horn, we drove about forty-five minutes to Stellenbosch. Stellenbosch is located in the heart of the wine route. This town is a beautiful university town and is also the historic cradle of Afrikaans culture. We visited the Stellenbosch Museum where we toured homes dating back to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Afterwards, we were given about one hour to walk around the town on our own. We ended up running into the tour guide about fifteen minutes later and she took us around the town to some of her favorite places. Our next stop was a wine farm where we would have the opportunity to learn about the history of this wine farm along with the process that they utilize to make wine. We also had the opportunity to sample five different wines. The name of the wine farm is Blaauwklippen. This wine farm was established in 1690, has had seventeen different owners and is the second oldest wine farm in South Africa.
On our way back we passed through some other towns and took in all of the scenery around us. While we past by beautiful homes in both Stellenbosch and in Cape Town, we also saw shanty’s (shacks) along the way back to the ship. Many of these people are waiting for government housing. It was not clear to us how long they will weight for their permanent housing.
Tomorrow, we look forward to exploring Cape Town. In the morning those passenger’s who are not on the next segment of the cruise will leave the ship and in the afternoon new passenger’s will be joining the ship.
This evening we had a nice quiet dinner in Silk Road, the Japanese Specialty Restaurant. The service was delightful along with the wonderful food.
Keith & Anne Marie
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