Despite what you may have read in the previous post, we did actually get out and see and explore Capetown. It is an astonishingly beautiful place at the bottom of the world, and geographically it is a lot like San Francisco. The city is surrounded by water with prominent, iconic mountains all around. In addition, it can be foggy and windy... and like SF, the water is damn cold, coming up from the Antarctic. The weather can be unpredictable and unruly, as this small slice of land jutting into the ocean divides the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans. There were many night where I thought the roof of the house was going to blow completely off, and we had to scour the neighborhood to find the garbage cans.

After the revelry of the 26th, I was done. I was tired, hungover and was forced to hang up my party dress. Things kind of slowed down after that, and we settled into a more relaxed and balanced pace. On the 27th, still hungover, Jimbo convinced me to get up and join him for a hike. We took the high road up to the saddle and headed up Lions Head, one of the more prominent mountains in town, second to Table Mountain. As we began, the mountain was shroud in fog. It was a pretty tough climb up, at times requiring us to scale cliff faces with steel ladders mounted into the rock. As we reached the top, the fog was breaking off in patches, allowing us amazing, dramatic views of the city and Camps Bay, Signal Hill and Capetown. The hike was just what I needed, and kickstarted our immersion into the sightseeing world.

The following day we did a hop on, hop off tour of the greater Capetown area. If you are not familiar with these tours, double decker busses follow a prescribed route around the city and surrounds, and you are free to get on and off as you please, catching the next available bus when you are ready to leave the stop you have been visiting. The ride took us through Capetown proper, around the east side of the city, finally depositing us in the wine region of Costantia. So we did some tasting and bought some wine and continued on our way. The next stop was Hout Bay. A really cool port town south of Camps Bay. We polished off a few beers and some grub and headed on back to the house. It was an easy day that let us recharge the batteries.

A few days later we climbed up Table Mountain, the iconic backdrop to the city. From our backyard we just headed straight up the mountain, following the Woody Canyon path up to the top of the mountain. From there we headed over to the Visitors Center and drop off for the cable car. On the way we passed through Echo Canyon, where we encountered a French family that looked a bit perplexed. They were yelling straight out off the side of the mountain. As we passed the father asked ‘Is this Echo Canyon?’. We told him it was down in the valley there, where we had just come from. So he kept yelling off the side of the mountain, still looking more perplexed. He looked at us again and asked ‘Does it work?’. ‘Huh???’. ‘Does the echo work?’. Jim explained that the noise needs to bounce off the walls of the canyon. So they would either need to direct their screams downward or do the hike down into the canyon to give it a go... They didn’t seem too intrigued with either of these options. As we left we continued to hear the fruitless calls off the side of the mountain... We hiked down the other side of the mountain and finished a loop around to the house. It was a long day...We went into town and got a nice dinner, intending on billing it to Johnny, who said he wanted to buy us a dinner for Christmas... Thanks buddy!

We made reservations for January 1 to go cage diving with the great white sharks... what a way to ring in the New Year! I originally wanted to do it on the 29th to coincide with my annual Polar Bear Plunge that takes place on the Jersey Shore, but it was difficult to get a reservation. So we scheduled it for the 1st, before taking off for Kilimanjaro on the 2nd. I was more than happy to have a low key New Years, as I had already exhausted my party quotient. So we were going to go easy as we had to be up at 7:30 to head south to the dive site. Unfortunately the wind picked up on the 31st, and while at a barbecue we learned that the trip had been cancelled. This was unfortunate as I was really looking forward to the experience, and I had talked a ton of shit about doing it. Jim was psyched as it allowed him to tear it up for the holiday. At around 9:00 I snuck out of the party, leaving Jim, Dan and a few others to their own devices, while I went home, poured a glass of wine and watched the Breakfast Club... I was completely content. In hindsight, it sounds like it was a good move. Of the three guys who went to party on Long Street, an iPhone and a wallet were relieved of the groups possession...

I didn’t really dig too deep while I was in Capetown. Perhaps I needed a week of just lying around. When I think of all of the downtime I used to spend in SF, lying around, relaxing, reading, watching TV, it is no suprise that my body was looking for this kind of respite. That said, I feel like I missed out on some opportunities, that I would like to return and do at some point. (The fact that there were no rental cars available certainly didn’t help our noble intentions...). Here is a list of some of the things I left on the table: visiting Robben Island, the place where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars before the fall of apartheid; seeing the penguin colony in Simon’s Town; a road trip south to see the Cape of Good Hope and Jeffery’s Bay; checking out the gallery scene of Capetown; doing a multi day hike to the southern tip of Table Mountain