Cape Point

Cape Point is amazing. There I had my first encounter with Baboons! Cape Point is part of Table Mountain National Park. As we were driving up, we saw a Baboon along the road. When we got to the destination, they were literally all over the place. The guide spent quite a bit of time telling us of the guidelines should a Baboon jump us. The primary point is that they will steal your food right out of your hand.

The first order of business was to get lunch. The only option at this park was a small convenience store with “those” sandwiches. We all were in the store and someone who was ahead of me and had already gone outside to eat, came back in with “A baboon took my sandwich so I need to get another one.” She was sitting along a wall and a baboon came out of nowhere and snatched her unopened sandwich. She was stunned. I later learned that another in our group had his cookies stolen as well. As a result, we all ate as as fast as we could, huddled up against the wall of the store, looking out for baboons. So what did you do on your summer vacation?

At this same place, I took my first ride on a funicular. This is a two car mode of transportation for getting up a hill (in this case). It is kind of cool. Only one of the cars had a driver and the other car moves based on a pulley system. When one goes up, the other comes down. They use the same track, but in the middle, there is a split in the tracks for one to go to one side while passing the other. I was quite fascinated by this and much preferred it to walking, thank you very much!

The view at the top was (again) amazing. I could have (but chose not to) walked further up to a lighthouse. The interesting thing about this lighthouse is that it was built at the top of this mountain and not very close to the coast. As a result, it didn’t really work very well and another one had to be built about halfway down the mountain on the point side.

Another interesting fact to know about Cape Point is that some want to believe (and their printed material suggests) that this is the point where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet, but it isn’t. That point is actually at Cape Agulhas National Park.

Then on to the next stop - - - Cape of Good Hope

But before we got that that, we were driving along the coast and our driver spotted two Right Whales just off the shore. (I am not sure that he should have been looking for whales while driving, but I’m glad he was!) We stopped and watched them for quite some time, seeing their fins and an occasional blow out their hole! The guide indicated that this was very early for them to be here. Usually, they don’t appear until possibly as late as September! He said that he could say for certain that we were the first tour to have seen them!