It rained all night long and still raining this morning. I slept so well. Finally got up around 8 am when it started getting light - it is winter here and the days are shorter so it gets light late and the suns sets around 5 - short days. I'm sure the cable car and ferry won't be running today due to the weather so I'm going on another tour through the countryside around the back of Table Mountain.
I forgot to document about the parking attendants in Cape Town. Employment is an issue so someone had the great idea to take out all of the parking meters and hire attendants to get the money from people for parking their cars. Each attendant is assigned 8 - 12 parking spaces - yep - only 8 - 12 so there are parking attendants everywhere! It ends up now that with this process, a good bit of the parking fees go into the pockets of the attendants and never recorded unless you ask for a receipt which most people don't do. Seems that there are so many different areas of corruption in South Africa!
Had a leisurely breakfast and then set out to tour on my last full day in Cape Town. Tomorrow night I begin to find my way back to the US on the last leg of my around the world trip - Cape Town to London and then to Washington, DC to visit Chris, my son.
Peter gave me a lift downton to catch my tour into the countryside and around Table Mountain. It was really rainy so it was difficult to see much of the countryside at first. We went by the huge hospital complex where Dr. Christian Barnard did the first heart transplant. Apparently they have good health care here in South Africa. We went to a huge botanical garden but it was so cloudy and rainy that we couldn't see anything. We then went around the back of Table Mountain where there are very exclusive homes. We also drove by the Constantia Vineyards - beautiful and I had just had some of this wine last night. We ended up in Houk's Bay where the seals are but I didn't get to see any of them. The weather was beautiful on the other side of the mountain. I walked along the dock and looked at boats and the beautiful beach. Looked in the shops and then the tour headed back into Cape Town - I was the only one on the bus going back into town so I had a private tour.. The closer we got to Cape Town, the worse the weather started getting again. More rain.
I got offthe tour at the Clock Tower and found out that the ferry to Robben Island is now running again - so perhaps I'll do this tomorrow morning before I leave for the airport.
Walked all along the waterfront and into the huge shopping plazas. Had a quick bite to eat and treated myself to another Italian gelato before getting a taxi back to the hotel. Watched a little bit of the French Open on TV with Peter (Nadal won again - yeah!) and then rested for my evening. Dinner at the hotel and then off to a theatre production of "Hair" over in Camp's Bay. The dinner was delicious - lamb curry made by Peter himself and also I got to try mulva pudding - made with apricots rather than the toffee in icky sticky!
The taxi was late picking me up for "Hair" but I got there with 5 minutes to spare, paid for my ticket, got seated and the play began. Given the very small theatre, it was very well done - great talent, excellent staging, and interesting effects. The entire cast was naked at the end of Act 1 in one of the many drug-induced scenes. In one drug-induced scene they acted out the "trip" that the main character was on, did the entire scene in reverse, and then did it again. That was neat. It was all done just like the hippie days in the '60's One interesting twist - they updated the ending for Iraq as if the entire thing was being done today - that was moving. One thing I noticed - the entire audience was white - not a single black and Peter tells me the blacks don't tend to do any of the cultural things with the white community. So things aren't as integrated as I thought they might be.
I was able to get the lone taxi at Camp's Bay (whew!) and went back to the hotel, had a nightcap and then to bed for my last night here in Cape Town, South Africa.
Larry
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