Overview - the short version
We spent eight days on the Cape. Highlights of the trip include: our
visit to see the endangered African penguin in the only habitat the
bird is increasing in number; a hike up to the old lighthouse on Cape
Point; a cable car ride up to the top of Table Mountain; a tour of the
famous Robben Island where political prisoners were held during
apartheid in South Africa; the touristy but colorful Victoria and
Alfred waterfront; and three glorious days in the Cape wine country.
In the event that you're interested in the rich details of our trip, I
provide slightly more description below.
Rachael enjoyed any part of the trip that involved sitting in her
backpack carrier and having wind blow in her face. She was a very
friendly girl and astonished complete strangers with her cuteness and
willingness to walk off with anyone. The backpack was quite a
spectacle, as such contraptions are very expensive, roughly equivalent
to US $600, even with the very weak dollar (we didn't pay nearly that
much, having bought it in Phoenix). The big Rachael moment of the
vacation was when she started calling Michael "Papa." She now uses the
word frequently to summon him. After getting the chance to spend an
entire week non-stop with her baby, Bianca got a call at work the day
after we got back to hear that Rachael had started walking in her absence.
On the recommendation of a friend, we booked a one-bedroom suite in an
all-suite hotel that offers free upgrades upon availability. As it
isn't quite tourist season yet, we got the free upgrade and ended up
with a two-bedroom suite. This was extremely useful because we had a
full kitchen, and Rachael got her own room. After putting her to bed
at the early hour of 6 pm, we knew we could move around the suite
without waking her. We ate delicious food Michael brought back from
area restaurants while enjoying the view of the sunsets over the
Atlantic Ocean, all from our balcony.
Not having thought of life as being particularly difficult in Harare,
we were sort of stunned at our reaction to how much easier it seemed
in South Africa. Americans might not be aware that they were out of
the US if everyone weren't driving on the wrong side of the road and
all the street signs looked weird! South Africa has a lot of the same
stores we do in Harare, but there's actually lots of stuff in them.
They also have a lot of stores we have in the US.
There are lots of things we didn't get to do because it was a
baby-friendly vacation. There are lots of adventure sports types of
things to do and a nightlife worthy of a "Wild On" show (no kidding,
E!ntertainment Television really did do one on Cape Town). It was a
great vacation, though, and we're seriously considering going back
next year.
Arrival
We flew into Cape Town after a crack-of-dawn flight from Harare to
Johannesburg, and a bit of a grueling trip from the international to
domestic terminal. Upon arrival in Cape Town, we discovered that our
car rental reservation for an automatic with air conditioning had
netted us a manual with no air conditioning. We went to the car rental
next door and emerged with a pleasant Nissan Almero, with automatic
transmission and air conditioning, powered by four hamsters, thanks to
Michael's President's Circle status at Hertz. By the time we arrived
at the hotel, there was enough time to get settled into our lovely
suite and have dinner in the hotel's restaurant before putting Rachael
to bed.
Simons Town & Cape Point
Thanks to Rachael's on-the-dot schedule of to bed at 6 pm and awake at
6 am, we got an early start on our trip down the peninsula. Michaels
A-number-one priority was to see the penguins at the Boulders, near
Simon's Town. There are lots of them, and they were molting, so they
were confined to waddling about the beach instead of inconveniently
swimming under the water. Rachael loved the penguins and was generally
excited to be out of her car seat and enjoying the breeze from her
carrier on Daddy's back.
After a pleasant lunch at the Penguin Café, we decided we might as
well continue on down to Cape Point, rumored to both the southernmost
point of Africa and the point where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans
meet. It is neither, but it's still pretty dramatic. A new lighthouse
had to be built as the old one is constantly enshrouded in fog,
resulting in great shipwreck diving today. The old lighthouse is now a
tourist destination. You have the choice of taking a funny-looking
little car called a funicular up to the lighthouse or hiking. We
wisely chose the hike—Rachael loved it, and her backpack was admired
by many in many different languages (at least German, Afrikaans,
Mandarin, Japanese, and English, and a few we couldn't identify).
Table Mountain
The next day we visited Table Mountain, a mountain with a flat top
that is a trademark of Cape Town. We decided not to hike this
time—it's a full day's hike—so we took the rotating cable car up to
the top and walked around the plateau. At the start, we were rewarded
with sunny skies and fabulous views of Cape Town and the ocean, then,
as we were hiking around, the "tablecloth," a blanket of clouds,
descended. It lifted just as quickly as it fell, and we had nice skies
on the way down again.
Because the Table Mountain trip didn't take long, we decided to go
down to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. If you've been to the
Baltimore Inner Harbor, you might have an idea of what the V&A, as
it's called, is like. The V&A is much larger scale, though, and its
aquarium is not quite the Baltimore National Aquarium. One of the
lovely things about Cape Town was that its tourist places, like
aquariums and tops of scenic mountains, have real restaurants instead
of over-priced fast-food like cafeterias that you will find in the
museums of our nation's capital. We ate at the aquarium (and saw a
wild seal from our view on the patio!) and vowed to come back but
didn't make it that day. After buying our tickets for next day's
Robben Island trip, we walked around a bit, stopped for refreshments,
and realized it was nearly Rachael's bedtime. We planned to spend more
time at the Waterfront after the Robben Island trip.
Robben Island
The Robben Island trip we would categorize as something we do not
regret, would not have missed, and would recommend to everyone. It was
also Rachael's least favorite outing. Having been warned that the trip
on the ferry is choppy and difficult for children, we were pleased to
see her enjoying the motion of the boat. Once on Robben Island, groups
are treated to bus tours of major sites, such as the house where one
prisoner was kept in complete solitary for years, the limestone quarry
where Nelson Mandela burned out his corneas, and the church from when
the island was a leper colony. Rachael hated this part. It consisted
of sitting on a bus for about 10 minutes at each location while the
guide explained the significance of it. She did much better on the
subsequent walking tour of the maximum security prison. We also got
another opportunity to see penguins just before reboarding the boat,
where we discovered that Rachael had had a bit of an accident with her
diaper. Fortunately, we had two spare outfits. We had lunch at another
restaurant on the Waterfront, spent a little more time walking around,
then called it a day.
We returned to the Waterfront the next day so we could give all the
shops a good look. We didn't buy much, because the luggage allowance
on South African Airways is a measly 20 kg per bag, and Michael and I
were sharing. We finally made it to the aquarium, which Rachael
enjoyed until she fell asleep for her morning nap as she was by now
accustomed to doing on Michael's back. Having finished up early, we
thought we'd go back to the hotel for a swim, but Rachael took an
afternoon nap instead, which was interrupted only by her dinner and
bath before it turned into her night's sleep.
Camps Bay, Kirstenbosch - the beach & garden
Thinking we would take it easy the next day, we planned to go to a
nearby beach, Camps Bay. We'd driven past it on the way to the
Boulders and thought it looked cute and lively, with some shops and
sidewalk cafes. Unfortunately for us, Cape Town was experiencing one
of its windy, rainy, and cool mornings. The only other people on the
beach were locals walking their dogs or jogging and people with no
other apparent place to be. We went for a walk on the beach then
headed off to another destination in our guide book.
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens was not on our high priority list, but
it looked interesting. By the time we got there, the sun was coming in
and out. It turned out to be one of the loveliest gardens we've been
to. Nestled at the foot of the mountains, the scenery is great. You
can hike up Table Mountain from the gardens. We walked around, letting
Rachael enjoy more breeze, then had lunch. Lunchtime that day was not
one of Rachael's shining moments, but she got over it and ended up
falling asleep during our walk through the greenhouse.
Still having plenty of day left, we decided to visit the Rhodes
Memorial because it was close. For a monument to a man who made such a
huge impact on the history of southern Africa, the memorial is a bit
understated (ok, "pathetic" is a better word). There is, however, an
excellent tea garden where Bianca enjoyed the best brownie I have ever
eaten. Michael's theme food of the vacation was cheese (we have very
bad cheese in Harare), so he chose a Greek salad with lots of feta and
sixteen olives. He was so impressed with the quantity that he was
compelled to count them. In Harare, olives are so expensive that those
16 would have been more than 3 times the price of the entire salad.
Stellenbosch - the wine country
We enjoyed our last sunset balcony dinner that night and the next day
departed for Stellenbosch in the heart of the Cape winelands. Our
first stop was Vergelegen, which we had read about in a guide book,
reputedly one of the best vineyards in South Africa. It was a nice
estate, and we toured some of the buildings and had lunch in a lovely
tea garden after sampling wines in their beautiful tasting room.
Africans absolutely adore babies, so the wine room staff kept Rachael
busy playing so that we were free to enjoy our wines without the added
expense of paying for all the broken crystal that Rachael would surely
have caused. To balance the wine, Michael indulged in the other theme
drink of the vacation—sparkling water (you can't get that at all in
Harare). We don't think we stopped anywhere that he did not order at
least one liter-bottle of the stuff, and he glared if Bianca dared to
take a glass.
After Vergelegen, we had time for one more winery and stopped at
Blauwklippen, mostly because it was next to our hotel and has lots of
different varietals. It was another good choice—a beautiful estate
with a fantastic tasting room/bar. We mentioned to the staff that
cheese is hard to find in Harare, and they recommended their cheese
platter. What a cheese platter! Unfortunately, Bianca was busy having
a reaction to the sulfites in the red wine, so Michael immensely
enjoyed the eight different kinds of cheese with figs, jam, and
crackers. Getting Rachael to bed that night was more of a challenge,
as we were in a conventional hotel room. She woke up only once, when
the front desk called to tell us that Bianca had left the rear window
of the car down.
The next day we started with another winery nearby, Kleine Zalze
(literally "small salt" in Afrikaans-ized German). Michael had a
pleasant conversation with the guy in the wine tasting room, and
Bianca stuck to white wines. Michael impressed the wine guy
sufficiently that he got multiple tastings of his favorite wines. We
purchased a gamay noir, very unusual in South Africa and grown mostly
in the Beaujolais region of France. We had by this time accumulated
three bottles of wine thinking we would drink them in the evenings,
realizing we wouldn't, and figuring they would fit in our carry-ons
(hey, we didn't need to carry so many diapers on the flight, did we?).
We next went to Stellenzicht (literally, "view from Stellenbosch" in
half-Afrikaans, half-German). They have a famous shiraz that has won
international competitions. They don't let you taste it, so naturally
we had to buy a bottle (it's one of Michael's favorite grapes).
Next we went on to Spier, which looked attractive because the guide
book said it had five restaurants and a cheetah park. We were amazed
when we got there. To say that it has five restaurants and a cheetah
park is to say that Disney World has some rides and sells Coca-Cola.
Indeed, we quickly decided it was the Disney World of wineries.
On the recommendation of an Austrian ex-winemaker who was also
visiting Stellenzicht, we headed for the Moyo restaurant. We don't
know how to properly describe this experience. The restaurant has a
pan-African theme and the most incredible lunch buffet—it is literally
50 meters long! We tried ostrich for the first time—yum! While eating,
we were entertained by a variety of performers, and Rachael and Bianca
got their faces painted. The outdoor restaurant is immense, including
a very large tent (where we sat), several smaller tents with regular
restaurant tables and some with sofas and coffee tables, and even
table settings up in the trees. The restaurant is so big that it has
four large bars. This is just one of the five restaurants.
The mixture of the heat under the tent and a shared bottle of wine
caused us to skip the tasting room and walk around the carnival-like
atmosphere. The wine shop has wines from all of South Africa's
vineyards. There's a small craft market where Bianca could not help
but buy a South African sculpture of two parents with a baby (Rachael
really doesn't go through THAT many diapers and bottles on the flight;
there's room in the carry-ons…). We then proceeded to the cheetah
park, where we favored viewing the cheetahs from outside the cage over
the Cheetah Experience, where a guide takes nutty tourists inside the
pens to actually pet and photograph up close the wild animals. These
are proper wild animals, by the way, rescued from various nasty
situations and cared for until released back into the wild. We moved
on to the raptor exhibit next door, with lots of owls, eagles, hawks,
and falcons. We finally left as Rachael's head started sagging.
Returning home
Our final day in the Cape we decided to walk around Stellenbosch
before heading out to the airport. We got an early start that day.
Unfortunately it was Sunday. The few things that were open did not do
so until 10 am. I think we parked around 8:30 am.
We did indeed stuff our carry-ons with four bottles of wine, one stone
sculpture, one blown-glass creamer and pitcher set, four mosaic tile
coasters, one set of Tanzanite earrings and necklace (Bianca's
indulgence), and, yes, plenty of diapers and formula. We did not go
over the limit on any of our bags, despite the seeming proliferation
of dirty laundry (well, Michael did buy two pairs of shorts after he
discovered that Rachael's Robben Island accident leaked onto his
clothes). We had two uneventful flights and eventually got all of our
luggage again in Harare. We finally got Rachael to bed around 10:30
pm, hoping she might sleep in the next day. Not our daughter! With her
impeccable internal clock, she was up again at 6:30 am.
