Trip to South Africa and Mozambique: Cape Town 1 – Cape of Good Hope
The entire route of the trip to South Africa and Mozambique, as well as useful tips, costs and conclusions, you can read Here.
To the previous travelogue: Me and the children of Africa
Accommodation
LAM's flight departed from Maputo (Mozambique) at 17:55. and landed on schedule in Cape Town at 8:40 p.m. Meanwhile, the other name of Cape Town is The Mother City, probably because it was the first European colony in South Africa.
In Cape Town, the driver I had booked on Booking never appeared in the arrivals hall at the terminal. So I ordered an Uber shipment, and later in the evening I wrote to the Booking support for the service not provided, I looked for my money back and within a few days it was in my account.
The property was called Greenpoint Port Guesthouse, a guest house booked through Booking.com. I recommend the place - clean, at a good price and in a top safe location - book here. The small yard was seriously secured with a surveillance camera and a wire fence against skipping the ordinary brick fence. My room was on the ground floor with basic equipment and I had access to a kitchen and a living room upstairs.
The safest area in Cape Town to stay is the one around the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. But no matter where you are, once evening falls and it gets dark, it becomes dangerous to walk around, especially alone. This was a rule I followed throughout my entire trip to Africa—I never went anywhere on foot after dark. If I had to, I’d call an Uber to take me directly to my destination. Near my lodging, there was a Woolworths supermarket, which had a wide selection of ready-made salads, finely chopped fruit, and meat cut into sticks (like the “beer” sticks in Bulgaria).
–> Browse and book a budget hotel in Cape Town at a discount. See here!
Cape Town - tips and impressions
My impressions of Cape Town are that it is a cosmopolitan city with wide boulevards, lots of greenery, poor and rich neighborhoods, relatively clean streets, a beautiful view of the mountains.
In South Africa and especially in Cape Town, the population has a serious drug problem. In many places it smelled like marijuana all day, and the most interesting thing was that as I'm sitting, I can smell this nasty misirsm and start looking around to see where it's coming from, but I can't see anyone - the smell just wafted through the air.
Writing for safety, the Secura Traveler SA mobile application (costs 49 rand = BGN 5) functions with GPS coordinates and provides the ability to send a panic signal to the nearest police team for rapid response.
I personally used Uber, but I’ve heard from someone who lives in South Africa that public transportation in Cape Town is well-organized. The buses are clean, modern, comfortable, and run on a regular schedule. It’s also the cheapest way to get to the airport. You buy a plastic card that you load with money. Then you tap the card when boarding and exiting the bus. It’s important to know that you can’t top up the card with the driver, nor is it possible at all stops—only at those marked as “stations,” which include the airport and the Waterfront. See an interactive map of city bus routes HERE.
Organized Tour of the Cape Peninsula
For the first day in Cape Town, I had booked an organized tour of the Cape Peninsula, visiting the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point and the beach of penguins in this site. Although I was warned that there was always a very strong wind there, the weather was perfect that day - sunny with little clouds, pleasant temperature and almost no wind. The lack of wind in Cape Town and especially the Cape of Good Hope is rare.
The tour starts at 9:30 a.m. from the office of the remarkable buses of the V&A Waterfront in front of the Aquarium. The excursion was led by a team of guides, the main of which, in addition to making an awful lot of jokes, also shared curious information about Cape Town and the towns we passed through:
1. There are 11 official languages in Cape Town, the most common of which are Afrikaans, Xhosa, and English.
2. One of the longest train journeys in the world takes place right here—from Cape Town to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania).
3. The small village of Muizenberg is an ideal spot for surfing, but keep in mind that the ocean water is very cold year-round.
4. The small village of Kalk Bay is known for its quaint little shops and a beautifully painted train station.
5. The town of Fish Noek is a place where going into the water is definitely not a good idea because there are sharks. It’s also interesting that this town has “Everything for 5R” stores—meaning everything costs 50 st.
6. The world’s first heart transplant was performed at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town by surgeon Christian Barnard on December 3, 1967.
7. The national animal of South Africa is the springbok (an antelope), and I had the opportunity to try its meat the very next day.
Cape Good Hope National Park
Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point is located in the national park of the same name, access to which is paid - for foreign tourists the entrance costs 400 ZAR (40 BGN). A national park is not so much because of the beautiful views, but because of the rich flora - a huge variety of plant species. In addition, zebras, antelopes, ostriches and monkey baboons can be observed. I personally saw only ostriches there, walking free and in several places. And I saw baboons, but in another completely unexpected place - read below. 🙂
The first stop was Cape Point - the place where the Indian Ocean merges with the Atlantic Ocean. The water on the left is warm and reaches 20 degrees, while the water on the right barely reaches 11-13 degrees because it comes from Antarctica. To my disappointment, there was no clear line of where one ocean ends and the other begins.
The view from Cape Pont was incredibly beautiful with the high vertical rocks and the waves crashing into them. In the distance you could see a beach with turquoise water. At the top there is a lighthouse built in 1860. at an altitude of 249 m above sea level. It can be reached either on foot along a well-built path or with a ficular, which costs R95 = BGN 10 in two directions. Since it often happened that the lighthouse was covered with clouds, after a while it was declared inefficient and another lighthouse was built at an altitude of 87m.
There is another path from the upper stop of the Finicular, going to the left, which was almost deserted, but along it I reached the ultimate point of Cape Point. On the way, cute black lizards jumped out and hid. Some of them were quite brave when they stood for a photo shoot 🙂 Important! There are toilets, souvenir shop and restaurant only at Cape Point, but not on the Cape of Good Hope.
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Next stop was the Cape of Good Hope, as the tour offered 2 options as desired - for more difficult-to-mobile people to travel by bus to the Cape of Good Hope, and for the rest - trekking for about half an hour, with the trail starting from the Cape Point parking lot, passing through the incredibly beautiful White sand beach Diaz Beach and ends at the Cape of Good Hope.
I, of course, had decided that I would walk there, but I got stuck like that in the Cape Point souvenir shop (I bought t-shirts for the children, magnets, Mandela tea) that I had to catch up with the already started afterwards group. Just imagine me - with shopping bags climbing rocks and trying to photograph everything. Hmm...
In reality, the trekking path is very well marked, there is no way to get lost. There is a turnoff with steep stairs down to Diaz Beach. Everywhere I turned, more and more beautiful views were revealed. At the Cape of Good Hope I saw albatross birds and cormorants, sometimes there were seals lying on some of the rocks further into the sea. There is also the emblematic inscription of the Cape of Good Hope - the most southwestern point of the African continent and the corresponding geographical coordinates.
Boulders Beach - The beach with the penguins
After obscenely many landscape photos in the Cape Point area and the Cape of Good Hope, it's time for the last stop of the program - the beach of penguins. Located in the town of Simon's Town, the beach is called Boulders Beach. A colony of about 3,000 African penguins can be observed there. The entrance fee is 190 ZAR (BGN 19) The entire complex has 3 separate points of view to the beach, and the first (left to right) path is crowded with tourists and there are the most penguins. On the second, less, and on the third, which falls on the far right of the beach and is actually free, because it is before the box office, one can go down to the beach itself and also meet penguins here and there. In addition to the beach, there were also many penguins in the adjacent grove. A penguin and I became first friends - he made big muzzles in front of the camera. And in addition to penguins in the forest, there were also some very curious rock damans (hiraxi) who were climbing the branches above the heads of passers-by, creeping along the paths or nibbling on each other's leaves and not at all They were disturbed by the people who surrounded them.
Here are some interesting facts about African penguins:
- They are small - they weigh no more than 5 kg. For comparison, the emperor's emperor penguins reach 30-40 kg.
- the most African penguins are found on the islands near South Africa and Namibia. There are only 2 continental colonies - that of Boulders Beach in Simon's Town and the Stony Point colony in Betty's Bay.
- this animal species is recorded in the Red Book of Endangered Species of South Africa. Due to oil pollution and intensive fishing, the population of African penguins from 1.5 million in 1931. Globally, it has sharply decreased to 10,000 in 2020. There are about 3,000 penguins on Boulders Beach.
– African penguins satisfy their thirst by drinking sea water, filtering it through a gland in their body and expelling salt.
– African penguins live 10-15 years and can swim up to about 130 meters, reaching up to 20 km/h.
- the sound they make on land sometimes resembles a donkey's roar.
- divorces are rare. 🙂 About 90% of penguin pairs stay together for life.
I bought a “Babushka”—an oil cookie with chocolate chips—from the little souvenir shop.
Unexpectedly! Monkeys on the roofs
Then, traveling from the beach of the penguins to the V&A Waterfront, we passed through a seaside town (I don't remember the name) literally occupied by monkey baboons. These are very large monkeys who had climbed on the roofs of the houses - some were sleeping there, others were scratching, others were watching. Even a baboon, deciding that he would cross the street, next to him was a woman with a flag with the image of a monkey, who organized its safe crossing and stopped all traffic - cars, buses, everything alive was waiting for the monkey to cross. She then walked along the sidewalk and still climbed onto the roof of a nearby house. I had only seen such a thing on the Internet, but it happened live.
Baboons are calm animals until they decide they want your food or glittering earrings or a phone. If you refuse to give them, it is highly likely that they will become aggressive. So it is recommended that when in contact with a baboon, you have no food in you (even in the backpack, because they sniff and open), neither jewelry nor a phone in a visible place.
To the next travelogue –> Arabs and Bulgarians in Cape Town
–> Browse and book a budget hotel in Cape Town at a discount. See here!
