Sat in bed tapping away. Could sit outside on the balcony but it’s cosy enough here. Had a good nights kip after our first day in Africa. We were tired from the journey and hit the hay at a sensible time. Not jet lag.
The only downside to the two hour time difference between here and home is that the Liverpool Chelski game didn’t kick off until ten fifteen pee em local time so I missed it. Sounds like it was a good game. Certainly a great result for the reds, again.
We have an action packed day ahead of us with a ride up the cable car to the top of Table Mountain this morning and a trip to Robben Island this afternoon. Robben Island is a four hour excursion so quite a longun. It’s a must do visit though.
Yesterday we spent the afternoon at the Waterfront which is where the hotel is. It’s a v convenient spot located in a collection of buildings that include the old Harbourmaster’s House. They still have the ball signal on the roof that told ships whether the tide was in or out. Doubt the tide makes any difference these days.
I’ve looked for a map that depicts Cape Town in 1832 to see where my cousin William Davies would have landed but no immediate luck online. There is a museum somewhere and will see if they have anything. It would have certainly been a lot smaller in those days. Tiny.
Took in a visit to the diamond museum which was fascinating. The whole tour was a build up to try and sell you diamonds but we were ok with that as it was v informative. You got to hold rings worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Our guide Nadia told us that roughly thirty percent of punters taking the tour ended up buying a diamond. I didn’t buy one 🙂
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Table Mountain was special. Stunning actually. The views were such that you could just sit up there all day looking. The city of Cape Town was 3,500 feet below us. Same height as Y Wyddfa in Eryri.
The slightly disturbing news is that they reckon Table Mountain will have eroded away, in ten million years time. Maybe someone got their sums wrong 🙂
Looking down on Cape Town it was easy to picture William Davies’ boat arriving in 1932. The city was a lot smaller then, obvs and the shore much nearer the mountain. Much land reclamation has been undertaken since, apaz. You can imagine their excitement after taking a whole year to get there. The other amazing thing to consider is that the Davies had a long journey to Grahamstown to make after arriving. It’s maybe five or six hours by car on modern roads. Weeks worth of walking for them in 1832. Maybe they had horses. Cape Town really was a gateway to Africa in those days. A daunting prospect with the unknown vastness of the interior before them.
The other thing to consider is the vast cultural difference the Davieses had to overcome.
The Queen Mary 2 is still in town. End point of a Southampton to Cape Town cruise. Fifteen out of twenty one days at sea wtf?!
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The excursion to Robben Island was very thought provoking.