Before leaving Cape Town for other parts ...

... Here are a few more (random) scenes of the city.*

 Two brightly painted buildings downtown on Long Street.

House of Parliament

The fort built by the colonizing Dutch in the late 1600's, now affectionately called The Castle of Good Hope.

Stained-glass window in the District 6 Museum, which used to be a Methodist Church.  District 6 was an area of Cape Town that was known for its vibrant and successfully mixed racial population which was bulldozed in 1966 by the apartheid government and its residents forcefully relocated to outlying townships.  The area was built up on the lower slopes of Table Mountain with beautiful views of both city and ocean.  It lies in ruins still, even though the current ANC government is trying to bring residents back to the region.

Newspaper clippings at the Museum with telling headlines.

  

 Protea -- a variety of fynbos and South Africa's national flower.

Fires on the mountain. (A controlled burn above Bokaap -- Cape Malay district.)

 Sun conures at a wildlife sanctuary.  (Thanks for the correction, Elizabeth!)

Downtown at the Greenmarket Square:  a good place to shop for curios: African masks, drums, T-shirts, ostrich eggs, shawls, beads, wooden carvings, etc.

An old Methodist Church which stands next to the Greenmarket Square.

 Camps Bay -- one of the pricier regions of the city, famous for its restaurants, bars and beach.

  Lighthouse near the V & A Waterfront.

At Tasca, a Portuguese-Turkish restaurant down at the Waterfront.   I was with an English AVIVA volunteer who is a Turk-Cypriot and wants to relocate to Portugal so it seemed the logical place to eat!

Painted walls in a small coffee shop where we enjoyed a sandwich and coffee.  Oh, they have such good coffee in South Africa! Nice and strong and always served with foaming hot milk.

Dolls in a funky shop on Long Street.

Atop Table Mountain.

*And with apologies to all the photographers I know -- both family and friends.  Wish my photos were better.  I know I can't always blame the cloudy skies and/or the moving bus.

South along the coast to the Cape of Good Hope

It was a cloudy morning and spitting rain when we started out on our Cape Peninsula tour, but the sun was soon out and the rest of the day glistened and shone.

 Hout Bay.  When the Dutch arrived they were enamored with the forests on these mountain slopes and they began building their ships and homes and furniture with the 'hout' ('wood' in Afrikaans).  Soon the wood was gone... But the bay is still beautiful.

An example of Cape Dutch architecture:  white walls, gables and roofs made of thatch woven from a species of Fynbos (Afrikaans for 'fine bush').

 Musicians greeting a tour boat at Hout Bay.

Handicrafts for sale: beads, carvings, batiks, bags, painted ostrich eggs and lots of malachite.

The next time I'm in South Africa I WILL bring home one of these ostrich eggs!

 

Looking down on the colorful town of Fish Hoek which lies along the coast and boasts the bluest of water and whitest of sand.

Simon's Town and one of Africa's penguin colonies at Boulders Beach.

I could look at the ocean all day long.

 

Where we ate our lunch: freshly grilled fish that melted in our mouths.

Baboons like Simon's Town, too, but the human residents find them a big nuisance.  They can be dangerous so we were warned to roll up our windows when our car stopped for pictures.

 The Cape of Good Hope -- African's most southeastern point.

 Aloe in bloom.

 A virtual 'forest' of aloe.

Can you see why they call South Africa 'God's country'?  That must be heaven in the distance.















(Reminder: click on any of the photos for a 'slideshow' and much better viewing.)