I didn’t sleep well at all on Monday night. Something I ate didn’t agree with me; had bad heartburn and finally up at 4am after just a few hours’ sleep feeling achy and chills. Not bad enough to stay in all day but definitely slowed us down. Was feeling mostly better by late afternoon.

We did change our plans, however, due to the weather, and did some of the stuff we were going to do Wednesday and Thursday on Tuesday because, if the forecast held, the weather would be much better. We had breakfast in the hotel and made our way out about 9am. We were making our way to Cape Point – the edge of the continent.

This was Hout Bay, along the way.

At Gail’s suggestion, we stopped at the Farm Village in Noordhoek. We got here about 10am.

This was a popular little coffee shop that catered to bicyclists. We bought some whole beans to take home with us.

Above and below: it was a cute little shopping area. We picked up some spices at another cute shop.

It was another hour’s drive to get to Cape Point.

All along the road there we saw signs like this one: Baboons are dangerous. Some of them asked you to keep doors locked and windows rolled up. This sign at Cape Point just says they are attracted by food. There were also signs about penguins! Sadly, we didn’t see either.

Cape Point is the “bottom” of the African continent (depending on your point of view, of course), where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. You can see that some in this photo – the Indian Ocean is the darker blue water against the Atlantic’s lighter color. The Indian Ocean is also much warmer than the Atlantic. This causes these waters to be very turbulent at times, and there were lots of shipwrecks back in the day because of this. Many of those ships are still resting at the bottom.

We took a funicular to the top.

There’s an old lighthouse at the top that was in operation from 1860-1919. It sits at about 820 feet above sea level. The problem is, it gets covered by clouds and mist. So after the ships kept wrecking anyway, they built another one further down at just about 280 feet above sea level.

A view up the other side of the coast. This is False Bay, which feeds into the Indian Ocean.

It was a pretty steep climb, and I wasn’t feeling great, but we made it!

A lovely view looking back, a beautiful beach on the left. Lots of ships have landed there. This isn’t exactly the most southern tip of the continent, it’s just the most south that’s somewhat accessible. The lower portions are so rocky where it meets the water, they are unusable.

From here you can see both sides: Atlantic Ocean on the left, False Bay on the right. And a weather station in between.

A map screen shot to show where we are. We traveled from Cape Town to where we are at the blue dot, pretty much along the coastline. It’s a similar setup to Highway 1 in California, with similar feel to it.

And zoomed out, you see us on the edge of the continent. Google Maps was doing something funny and tipped the direction for some reason, but it sort of makes the point I was making earlier: we refer to north/south, top/bottom like they are some static things. And while we’re on land, they are. But from space, none of those distinctions matter.

The official record that we were there!

We made our way back to the heart of Cape Town and got to Table Mountain about 1:35pm. At the base is a complex of toilets, some eateries, and of course the aerial cableway.

It’s a pretty steep climb, some of the windows are open, and the floor rotates 360 degrees as you go up so that everyone gets a chance at a good view.

All of downtown Cape Town from the top: right of center at the water is the harbor and waterfront we were at the night before.

And the rest of it. The mountain sort of frames the core of the city against the water. It’s pretty cool.

Requisite selfie with random dude in the background :)

The view from the other side. That town I think is Muizenberg, the water is False Bay again, just further north from when you last saw it!

My vertigo was kicking in bad the entire time but I just deal with it. This bridge really triggered it though!

They had a restaurant called 1027 – the height in meters of the Table Mountain – and we stopped for a bite to eat. Restaurant is a stretch – more cafeteria, not great options and not super quality. But it had been 6 hours since a light breakfast so just had something simple: a slice of margherita pizza for me and a mushroom and chicken pie for Ash.

We made our way to Honest Chocolate. We’d heard about this before somehow, but Gail had also recommended. Owned and operated by local women. The make the chocolate from beans shipped in from Tanzania (South Africa is too cold, can grow them) in their own factor about a mile away. And run this little cafe. We bought a fair amount to take home.

Ash got a chocolate tart with peanut butter inside, ridiculously rich but so tasty. He also got some tea that was delivered after this shot! I had hot chocolate that was thick and rich, and a simple thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie.

We made our way back to our room and I rested for a bit before we left to catch another sunset and find something to eat.

We had used this bridge at the waterfront the night before but I didn’t realize it moved! Shortly after we crossed, there was an announcement about it closing to allow a boat to pass.

It swung over to the side on top of the sidewalk and then slid back into place after the boat came through.

We got a little bit of a late start but caught the tail end of the sunset. There’s also a Ferris wheel on the waterfront that makes for a nice photo. I love that the hot guy running is checking out Ash.

Probably our last sunset of the trip, at least over the water. Tonight, we will be in Simon’s Town which is on False Bay facing east; plus it’s likely to be raining.

We stopped at Mozambik on our way back, ranked #4 on TripAdvisor for Cape Town restaurants.

It really hit me at this meal how toned down the safari food was knowing their audience is mostly white people – which is was, as we’d predicted. This was delicious and I wish we’d done more of this. I had shrimp and pasta in a peri peri sauce, a specialty of Mozambique that is creamy, spicy and wonderful. Ash had a potato cheesy torte dish that he didn’t care for all that much (but I did!) and some shrimp that came later that he really liked.

Who knows what’s in store for today. The only thing we have to do is check out of the Marriott downtown and into our Airbnb in Simon’s Town for our final night. Since we already did Cape Point, which was sort of the reason we booked in Simon’s Town, we’ll see what we come up with instead.