Day 270 - Cape Town - 3rd May, 2003

We set off straight after breakfast today to do a tour of the cape. Cape Town itself is not at the very bottom of the country. You have to travel on down to the Cape of Good Hope. We started off going across country to get to the other side of the Cape peninsula. On the way we went through Constantia and checked out the Waldorf school. The fees are a very manageable £1,400 per year.

We then went to the see the penguin colony where we spent quite a bit of time taking photos and watching their antics.

We drove on to Simon's Town on the east side of the cape for lunch. There is a naval base here and apparently it was the most important British naval base from 1837 to 1957 when it was returned to South Africa. I suppose if you controlled this point you could control who went from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

We visited the Toy Museum here which was actually a very big shop and saw the bronze statue of the famous dog called Just a Nuisance. He used to help all the sailors find their way back from Cape Town after a night out on the town and he was made a naval rating.

We drove onto an Ostrich farm but didn't do the ostrich riding that was offered and then back up the coast to Chapman's Peak. This is a glorious cliff road alongside the coast and is very reminiscent of the drive down parts of the west coast of the US particularly Big Sur. On the way we saw the famous cape baboons.