Capetown is an incredible place. Ocean on one side, beautiful mountains on the other, makes us miss home! We've rented an AirBnB overlooking table mountain in a fantastic spot in the city for walking. Our first day we headed out to the Green Market Square, a mix of lively streets selling African made goods. We put our new found haggling skills to the test and walked away with 3 new paintings! On top of the street pubs and craft market there were multiple street artists providing some music and dancing. The market has a lot of really interesting finds and friendly vendors. It's a great way to spend a few hours. Shortly into our stay we headed out to Gansbaai, a cute little coastal town famous for shark diving. It was a super early start with a 4 am pick up and a 2 hour drive but well worth it. After a quick breakfast and safety briefing off we went. We quickly found the sharks about 10 minutes from shore where they live year round. South Africa is the Great White Shark capital of the world, sadly the numbers have dwindled to 500 or less in recent years. There isn't an exact number of great whites known in the world but we do known the numbers are shrinking due to over fishing, shark fin poaching and effects from global warming. I went in the cage first along with 6 others. We waited on a short while before our first shark was lured in by the smell of dead fish being dumped into the water. A 3.5 meter shark casually swam by my face only inches away checking out the smells before continuing on. At first my heart was thumping away making it hard to hold my breath. By the second shark I managed to collect myself and relax and really enjoy the second encounter. Chris went in the cage next and had an even better view as a different shark about the same size gave him a smile. It was really cool to be in the water with the sharks but watching them from the boat really gave us the full extent of their size. We also saw some massive sting rays coming up to take some nibbles from fish head on a string used to lure the sharks. Our guides were professional and fun and it was an incredible 3 hours. The only down side was poor visibility because of the algae blooms summer weather causes. Funny thing about Capetown is that the ocean is warmer in the winter and the water is clearer so if you're coming for sharks come in during winter (june/ july) After an thrilling day we kept it low key for a few days and headed to some local museums. The National Art Gallery was an eye opening experience with the main exhibition highlighting South Africa's dark past during apartheid. We couldn't help but think back to home and everything that's gone on recently in Quebec and in the US. South Africa has realized there is strength in diversity. Not every tension has been soothed here but they've come along way. The best way to get around and see Capetown as a visitor is with the Hop on Hop Off. There are 4 loops to hop on with various popular stops. We started with a Cable Car ride up Table mountain. The que to get up the mountain was insane, thankfully we bought our tickets in advance which helped a bit. It's worth the wait for the stunning views! We headed down and hopped back on the bus and continued our loop to V&A Waterfront. Named after Queen Victoria and her son Alfred, it was once an extremely busy harbour for trade goods until the Suez Canal was built. Since then the harbour has been reinvented and is now home to new trade, luxury cruises and fishing. The harbour is amazing for shopping and eating. We had a fantastic lunch at a brew pub rocking live music down here at Quay 4. With the Hop on Hop off we got a free canal boat ride from the V&A Waterfront. It wasn't particularly exciting but we did get to see a bunch of harbour seals playing around and sleeping in the large tires used as bumpers. Day two with our bus ticket we headed out to Kirstenbosch Gardens. It's an incredible, though some what maze like, garden. The views are epic, especially on the tree canopy walk recently installed that gives you a view over the city 12 meters off the ground. They have great interpretive signs all over the gardens explaining various uses and history of the unique plants. Even if you're not that into gardens it's a fantastic place to visit. After taking in the roses we headed to the oldest wine region in South Africa, Constantia. There are 3 wineries on the bus route. We made it to two before the generous portions and sun shut us down. Our first stop was Beau Constantia pouring up some incredible whites and reds with hill top views. We really liked the Pas de Nom White and bought 2 bottles (only $9.00 each!) plus one bottles of a red Cab Franc/ Merlot blend. Next stop is the oldest estate in South Africa, Groot Constantia. The estate is massive and beautiful. We did a tasting here and the wine was fantastic! We decided cheapest way to do stuff outside the city was with a car rental, prices are really reasonable for the rental though gas is a bit high (similar to Vancouver). We first headed out to Simon's Town and Boulder Beach the home to South African penguins! The town is super cute, small shops and waterfront restaurants serving up fresh fish. The fish and chips were amazing! A short distance from the main street is boulder beach, a nature reserve for the hundreds of penguins that call the beach home. There is a small entrance fee to get in but worth it for the well maintained walk ways installed to protect the birds. The views are amazing and the birds are fun to watch waddle around and surf the waves in the bay. Before leaving Africa we decided to make a last ditch effort to see some big cats in the wild. We booked a 2 day stay at Aquila game drive, 2 hours from Cape Town. The drive there was gorgeous taking us through the mountains and wine lands surrounding the city. The Aquila resort was beautiful with a large pool and lounge area over looking the game reserve and very comfortable rooms. They even grow most of their own organic vegetables on site using aquaponics. The basic idea is that the fish water and waste is used to fertilize the vegetables and the plant roots filter the water for the fish in a symbiotic relationship. The result is fantastic tasting fish and vegetables with each meal! Aquila is a private 10 000 hectares conservancy and home to the big 5 and many other animals. They also have a Animal Rescue Centre where they've taken in animals unfit for the wild, including 2 cheetahs, lions, leopards and crocodiles. We did 2 game drives during our visit. The first one in the evening we were extremely eager to see a lion. It was game drive #6 for us by this point and we hadn't seen a single large cat in Africa. When we started the game drive the first thing we came across were the giraffes and zebras, always fan favourites. As we were watching the giraffes and hearing about random facts we spotted rhinos up ahead. Our driver in this instance liked to go into extreme detail with each animal before moving on so Chris and I sat not so patiently to get up to the rhinos. Were losing our minds a bit on the inside wanting to see one up close! After hearing about the gestation period of a zebra we finally headed to the rhinos up ahead. They were incredible to get up close to! The females have the long, scary looking horns to protect their infants and the males have the smaller, blunter horns. They were fantastic to see and let us know when were getting too close by placing the pointy end of their meter + long horn straight at our truck. These were white rhinos which are exactly the same colour as black rhinos except for the white lip which distinguishes them. After a good while with the rhinos we continued on ward in search of new wild life. We came across some Elands, the largest antelope species and a very important animal to early African people. When we were at a museum in Cape Town the week before we saw some San rock art that were over 1000 years old depicting the elands in relation to the people. It described how vitally important this animal was to their culture and survival. We also caught sight of what is often referred to as the ugliest animal alive, the wildebeest. It's easy to tell how it got this title but despite it's odd pieced together appearance I liked them! Our guide described it as being an animal made form all the left over parts of other animals, head of a wart hog, rump of a hyena, neck of a buffalo etc. We continued on ward hearing more in depth descriptions of water buffalos, elephants, spring bok (South Africa's national animal). Finally our guide says the magic words, 'lets go see if we can spot some lions'. YES, this is why we were here, show us the lions! As we drove around he said the last thing we wanted to hear ' lets take a break fist'. NO, we want lions first than we can break. Of course this isn't fare to the rest of the people on our game drive so we sat tight, enjoyed our free champagne and snacks. Chris was getting less and less patient understandably by this point. Finally the break was over and we entered a gated area of the park. Within a minute we saw a massive female lion casually walking down the dirt path in front of us! What we didn't realize is that Aquila keeps the lions caged in an extremely large enclosure so they don't get out and kill everything in the park and also because they are rescued lions. As we continued we saw a few more lions high up and well hidden on the ridge of a cliff. Though they weren't exactly in the wild the way we had really wanted to see them it was fantastic none the less to see lions up close. The next morning on our second game drive we had a chance to go back through the lion enclosure where most of the lions had come down from there perch. It was fantastic, especially knowing these guys were at one time the potential trophy for some rich hunter. If you're not familiar with the term 'canned hunting', it's basically a practice in certain parts of Africa where lions are held in captivity for hunting. If you're in Africa and offered cub petting or walking with cubs it's best to avoid it. The cubs are taken from their mother shortly after birth and hand reared, this makes it impossible to release them back into the wild once they're older because they lack the essential skills for survival. These cubs are very often used for tourists to take photos with until they get too big. Once they've outgrown the photo ops they are sold to hunters or breeders. No true sanctuary will allow you to walk or touch the lion cubs, this is to protect you from them and to protect the cats from harmful diseases and stress. My general rule of thumb is if it's not something that would happen naturally in the animals life it shouldn't happen at all. The 2 days at Aquila were fantastic. after our stay we had a few day left in Cape Town before leaving. We spent them enjoying the sun, going for picnics in the park, shopping in Green Square and lunching at the V&A Waterfront. This city has everything from amazing food, fantastic coffee (Truth Coffee is seriously good), music and friendly faces. I don't say this lightly but I could happily live in the city and was very sad to be leaving.
We're now in Madrid where it's much colder but really fun! More updates to come!
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