Cape Town August 1-8

The first week of our vacation we flew to Cape Town with Elder and Sister Barnett.  The Barnett's have been here 2 months longer than we have.  So they were the newbies until we got here.  (We hear there are new, newbies coming in the next week or so!)  So we're oldies again!

We took the Red Bus City Tour the first couple of days to get acclimated.  Our first stop was the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens.

We are in the beginning of Spring.  Everything was so green and beautiful.  That is Table Mountain in the background.

We did the vineyard tour and had lunch at Costansia Vineyards.  That was the best meal of the week.  David had curry and I had a pork chop that was 3" thick...without exaggeration.  All for the whopping sum of $10.00 each.  It was very peaceful.

We had an old golden retriever come lay down at our feet.  No begging....just lay down with us.  Add some ducks and geese and it was a very bucolic setting!

What a life!

Our last stop of the day was at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront.  I think we visited the waterfront every day.  It was close to our hotel and had lots of shopping and places to eat.

Each day had different entertainment.  And they all had CD's for sale.

On the third day Elder Barnett realized that he lost the keys to the rental car.  With reassurances that they would bring him another set of keys within the hour....it took the majority of the day to get things going (Here in Africa they have a saying that they will do it "just now"--which means "sometime in the future, but the time is unspecified" No worries, this is Africa time.).  They decided to bring a new car instead of keys.  Five days later, as we were leaving to go home, the original car was still parked in the hotel parking (at $5.50/day).


There was a Burger King half a block away from our hotel.  (Both Elders were ecstatic!)  We usually ate a big lunch at a nice place and then a couple of times had an evening meal at Burger King.  In Elder Barnett's words, this is what happened on one of those evenings:

When the 4 of us were sitting in Burger King one night a very nice man - Stephen- came up and sat next to us.  He said he felt prompted that he should talk to us.  Of course our "missionary lights and sirens" went off with excitement.  He then said - I have been wanting to help the elderly the last little while and saw you... he thought he would talk to us elderly people. Boy was that a dose of reality!  We did have a nice visit and I had given away the last of my two pass along cards I had brought earlier that day, so we took his phone number and I gave it to the Cape Town Mission office.  He was a very good person.

Bright and early the next morning we headed out for Cape Point.  (Bright and early was about 9:00)

Simon's Town on the way to Cape Point.

To get there you go through a few little towns....and Boulder Beach with its colony of Jackass Penguins (so named because they bray like donkeys.)

We headed up to the light house.









We took a different route home...and saw a township nestled in the hills.  Many of the roofs have heavy stones on them.  We think that is how they keep the roofs from blowing off.

This township gets an A for location!  That's the Atlantic Ocean out there!

On Sunday we went to Fast and Testimony meeting in Cape Town.  We saw a number of familiar faces from the temple.  After the meeting we took a beautiful drive over to Cape Agulhas.  This is the southernmost tip of Africa....where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet.

Almost everything is in both English and Afrikaans.  

The whole coastline was very rocky and wild like this.  We also stopped at a nice beach on the Indian Ocean side.  Lots of shells laying around...we talked to 2 couples (to ask directions to Cape Agulhas) and they had picked up a nice sized piece of coral!  The sea and sky!  So beautiful!  (Deep inhale!)




An excerpt from a letter to Beth:

Wow!  It is so beautiful.  Full blown nature!  Blue skies, aquamarine ocean, green foliage.  We were in heaven.  Johannesburg is brown, brown, brown…and burnt.  When you drive out of the city it’s hazy because they control weeds by burning.  They call it the “burning of Africa”.  So Cape Town was good for the soul.  

A few pictures I took on the way to Church last Sunday (Joburg).

Brown, brown, brown.





















 and then a few on the drive from Cape Agulhas.

I think this is wild mustard.  Reminded me of the Galilee in March.

It was late in the day...and the cloud cover made the pictures kind of dark...but you can see the beauty of the landscape....and I didn't even get pictures of the meadows and hillsides of sheep.

Our last day we took the funicular to the top of Table Mountain.  When we arrived in CapeTown we found out that the funicular would be closed all week for maintenance so we were glad it was open our last day.  (We worried a little because if it's at all cloudy they don't run).  When there's a cloud cover on the top of the mountain they call it a Table Cloth!  But we had another glorious, clear, warm day.  When we got midway up the mountain for the loading of the funicular there were 2 lines...both really long; one for those with tickets, and one for those without. (kind of reminded us of Disneyland!)  We didn't want to buy tickets beforehand, not knowing what the weather would be...so we were in the no ticket line.  We had been in line for about half an hour when we came to a marker that said: One hour wait from this point to get tickets.  The question came up....When we get tickets, do we then go up?  Or do we have to go to the back of the With Tickets line?  I convinced Elder Barnett to go ask one of the vested workers the answer to that question.  I'm not really sure what he asked...but he walked away with the worker and 5-10 minutes later he returned, tickets in hand, and motioned for us to GET OUT OF LINE????? (I mean we had now made it to the 45 mins to go marker).  The worker took us over to an elevator, put us on it to the 5th floor.  Elder Barnett put 100Rand in the worker's hand and the elevator opened up to the loading doors of the funicular!  (See!  It was just like Disneyland!)  We stayed up there for over an hour and on the way back down we saw a high school rugby team (that had been just behind us when we were in line), who were now walking up the stairs to the loading zone to go up in the funicular.  What a gift!!!!!

It always amazes (horrifies) me how far away we are from home!

We ended our last day at the wharf with another yummy lunch/dinner!  Then we packed up our bags and headed back to Johannesburg!