Cape of Good Hope

Charlotte York and I joined one of those tours that picks tourists up from hotels and shuttles them around to see the local sights today. We joined a newlywed couple from Toronto and a very socially awkward prison employee from Chicago on an all-day journey from Cape Town to the Cape of Good Hope.

Our first stop was a beach right outside of Cape Town, where the jail man opted to take a ferry to visit seals. Charlotte York and I decided instead to walk along the beach and watch all the locals walk their dogs (Today is Freedom Day, a national holiday celebrating South Africa's first democratic elections.).

After our little beach trip, we went to the startlingly beautiful Cape of Good Hope, where we climbed to see a lighthouse and snapped a quick picture at the continent's most south westernly point. At each point, we alighted with other busfuls of tourists and we kept seeing one middle-aged man in particular - he of the pink socks in the brown sandals with the very short pink and black shorts featuring some sort of skull pattern.

We then headed to Simon's Town for a seafood lunch and to see a colony of South Africa's warm weather penguins, one of the trip's highlights! Finally, we headed back to town and visited the very pretty Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

When we finally got back to our hotel, we were exhausted, but we rallied and walked down to the waterfront, experienced a magnificent sunset, and had a lovely dinner along the water.

Day one was definitely busy, but a great experience seeing a lot of Cape Town's sights.