South Africa Day 6

On Saturday, Tim and Alan had tickets for the 9am ferry and tour of Robben Island. After standing in line and waiting for a while, they announced that the sea swells made it too dangerous to make the voyage (luckily, they offer refunds on the tickets). So they came back to the hotel to get the car and went to a national park (Western Coast National Park) about 120km north of the city. It sounded like a great place to see some wildlife… they have pictures of ostriches, deer/antelope, lots of birds, some snakes, and some kind of rock climbing groundhog like animal. After they returned, Tim cleaned up and went to dinner with me and the rest of the people from my meeting. It was a lively dinner at yet another restaurant on the waterfront. I had a goat cheese/beet root tart and roast chicken. It was good, but it turns out that I just don’t seem to like beets. Tim had sushi (which seems to be very common here) as an appetizer then roasted shoulder of lamb on polenta. All in all a very nice meal.

South Africa Day 5

On Friday, Tim and Alan hiked up Lions Head. This rocky hilltop is the other side of Signal Hill, which they climbed earlier in the week. The hike was touted as the best view for the effort, since, at the top, you can see in all directions, including back into Cape Town and up to Table Mountain. Tim got quite a few great vista pictures and several fauna photos as well. In the afternoon, the guys picked up the rental car, and Alan kindly took the first driving task. They drove the car back over to the hotel to pick up Miryung and me, along with Hyrum, a graduate student from UT. We rushed through Cape Town to the Cableway station for Table Mountain. We caught one of the last trams up to the top of the mountain for some great views of the setting sun. Tim and Hyrum decided to use the last 45 minutes of daylight to hike down, while the rest of us settled for the Cableway back down. Back in Cape Town, Miryung and Alan had dinner plans, so Tim, Hyrum, and I went to an Italian restaurant at the waterfront. It was actually very good… I had ostrich lasagna and Tim had wild-game Bolognese with gnocchi.