Cape Town and Around
Facing the Atlantic Ocean and with the majestic Table Mountain as the backdrop, Cape Town is indeed a beautiful waterfront city. It is a pity that the crime rate has escalated recently and that last thing I would do is to walk around the town with my camera gear. "Don’t leave your car outside along the road overnight. It will be gone the next morning. There’s a hotel around the corner with a carpark where you can park your car," so says that the owner of Zebra Crossing Guesthouse. And we obediently heed his advice. My tour of the city is mainly confined to driving around the city locking myself inside the car. It is only at Victoria & Alfred Waterfront that I let my my guard down a little. This tourist hub with the waterfront, shopping center and eating outlets has a strong resemblance to the World Trade Center in Singapore. Besides the obvious Table Mountain and the city itself, there are many other scenic attractions around. We spend the Sunday driving around the peninsula of Cape of Good Hope by the coastal areas. The Chapman’s Peak Drive is one of the most scenic coastal drives in the world. With sheer cliff on one side and the Atlantic Ocean beyond the beautiful bays on the other, it is hard for drivers to remain undistracted by the magnificent view. Against the recommendation by several guidebooks, we started off at Camps Bay, encountering many cyclists along the Chapman’s Peek Drive before getting to Muizenberg to photograph the colorful bathing huts. We did some window shopping at Simon’s Town and came across some jackass penguins at Boulders beach. We proceeded to Cape of Good Hope to have lunch before exploring the lighthouse at Cape Point and the rest of the park. We had a half-day excursion to the Franschhoek wine route the following day. It was not the season and the vineyards were brown and unsightly. However, from the top of the hill, the valley was remarkably beautiful and picturesque! The Boschendal winery between Franschhoek and Stellenbosch is renowned to be the most beautiful in the Cape region. We visited the little museum but didn’t try wine tasting or its supposedly excellent restaurant for lunch.
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