Day 91 - April 4, 2025 - Friday - Cape Town, South Africa, Day 2

Our second day in Cape Town began with a new ship location, only a few hundred meters move during the night, but a new perspective.  It is going to be a great day to be in Cape Town, clear skies and low winds.  

 

We have an excursion to Table Mountain today.  This was my "have to do" item in Cape Town.  Our guide said that just a couple of days ago, the mountain cable car was closed due to winds (it was also raining).

View on the drive up.

After a short, 20-minute drive we arrived at the lift parking lot.  We were there at 8:20 and it was still almost a 45-minute wait to board the lift.

By the time we actually boarded the lift the line was out of sight down the road.

I will just share a few of the photos from our walk around the top of Table Mountain.

The Viking Sky is visible from the 3500 feet elevation of Table Mountain.

Bird of the Day - Red Wing Starling

This photo illustrates just how flat the top is!

Lizards of the Day!

Southern Rock Agama

Black Girdled Lizard - found only in the Cape Area

Getting ready for the decent.

We were sad at dinner this evening.  This was the first night in three months of having dinner at the Restaurant that our waiter Aqil was not with us.  He left in Cape Town to return to his family in India before his next assignment.  We will miss you Aqil!

We now have one day at sea as we make our way to Lüderitz, Namibia.

Day 90 - April 3, 2025 - Thursday - Cape Town, South Africa

Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's second-largest city, after Johannesburg, having a population of about 3.75 million.

The city was founded by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a supply station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa, India, and the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the VOC Cape Colony, the first permanent European settlement in South Africa.

 We learned the night before arrival that our dock location had been changed.  Instead of being at the cruise terminal building the first day, we would have to dock in the commercial area.  We will be moving overnight to the cruise terminal area.  Not being at the terminal area meant we could not walk off the port.

Sunrise Thursday

Our tour today was scheduled to be 8.5 hours and encompasses a great deal of the Cape Town Area.  There are a lot of photos and for the most part, I will just let them tell the story of our day.

This homeless person living in the bus stop was located about 100 yards from the "Living Hope" sign at the housing development in the previous photo.

Cape Point Lighthouse lift.

The winds were strong at the top of the mountain.

We then drove the short distance to the actual Cape of Good Hope.

We then had lunch at a nice restaurant on False Bay.

This was one of the few beers I have ever had that I just couldn't drink.  

"Windhoek beer, particularly Windhoek Lager, is a popular Namibian beverage known for its quality and unique flavor. Brewed by Namibia Breweries Limited since 1920."  Perhaps it was the "unique flavor" which I didn't like...

Baboons can be a problem in the area.  The restaurant was enclosed in an electrified fence.

Bird of the Day - Yellow Bishop

Be careful where you wash your dishes...

Our last stop was at Boulders Beach to see the Penguins.

The African Penguin or Cape Penguin

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has officially uplisted the species to Critically Endangered, with fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs left in the wild.  There were about 2 million total at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Day 88 & 89 - April 1 & 2, 2025 - Tuesday & Wednesday- Gqeberha, South Africa & Sea Day

Gqeberha, formerly named Port Elizabeth, and colloquially referred to as P.E. is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa with a population of about one million.

We were scheduled to arrive at 6:00 AM and we were to meet for our excursion on the pier at 8:25 AM.  I was up at 5:00 AM and observing my Geo Tracker app, I realized we would not reach landfall by 6:00 AM.  We were dressed and in the Cafe for breakfast just before 7:00 AM and I noticed a change in the ships position.  I again checked the Geo Tracker app and realized we were making a turn.  We continued to turn until we were headed back out to sea.

Following breakfast, we returned to our cabins and waited for some announcement.  It was over an hour before the captain announced that they had aborted entering the harbor due to the wind but felt that conditions were getting better, and he would try again.  Later still, the cruise director announced the "new" meeting times for the tours.  Our tour was not to meet at 9:45 at the Chef's Table restaurant. 

We arrived at the Chef's Table at about 9:40 along with a couple of other groups.  At about 10:15, it was announced that they were rearranging the departure times and now our group was to meet back at 11:00 AM.  At this point we decided to skip the excursion (it was an included one and thus no extra charge) and just take the shuttle to town. Many people had 7- and 8-hour safari type excursions scheduled and would be late returning to the ship.  

Looking at the Geo Tracker app, it is my belief that the captain had decided to totally abort going to the port of Gqeberha, otherwise why would he have traveled almost 10 miles back out to sea before returning, rather than just wait to see if the wind conditions would improve.  The wind was only around 20-25 mph.  

The cruise director made the statement during her announcement that she begged the captain to not miss the port because she had two entertainers who were boarding.  Also, I expect they would have to refund tens of thousands of dollars in excursion fees for the missed port.  

Anyway, we took the shuttle to the Boardwalk Complex, a hotel, casino, mall development which was quite beautiful.  We enjoyed walking thru the mall and then down to the beach, directly across from the mall.  I have no photos; I didn't take my camera.

Wednesday has been a relaxing day at sea.  We attended a thought provoking lecture this morning by Steve Burrows CBE entitled "We are Stardust."  He examined what we know about Earth, what we don't know, and what we don't know we don't know.  

Later in the morning, our naturalist and photographer, Richard Lovelock, presented a lecture and photos about the animals he has photographed since boarding the vessel in Sri Lanka.  

Tomorrow we are looking forward to an 8 1/2-hour tour along the coast to the southern-most point of the Cape and of Africa.