Wednesday – April 16, 2025
Today’s featured photo is a panorama taken at the top of Table Mountain overlooking the city of Cape Town, South Africa. You may have seen photos of Cape Town taken from the sea some distance out. Table Mountain looms over the city as an Iconic piece of rock. In 2011 Table Mountain was named one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature. Seeing it in person you can understand why.
Each day we receive a guide for the activities of the day. That guide tells when we will arrive at a port and when we will leave. It give the sunrise and sunset times. At night the cabin steward pulls the drapes on our balcony windows so we aren’t bothered with light from outside. We were expecting to dock at 08:00 and depart at 18:00. I awoke around 05:30 and poked my nose between the curtains to see what was happening. We had already arrived in port and were docked – 2 and a half hours before out published arrival time! Not only that, but staring me in the face was this huge hunk of rock known as Table Mountain – it seemed very close and very imposing. I took a couple photos of the mountain before sunrise and you’ll find them in today’s media.
Around 7:30 a band began to play just below our balcony. It was a 3 piece band there to welcome visitors (and hopefully get some tips from them). You’ll find a short video of the music they were playing. It sounded like some of the steel drum music we have heard in the Caribbean but they used a standard drum set and xylophones.
We paraded to the theatre and waited for our excursion to be called so we could leave the ship and find our tour bus. This was to be a short tour of the city of Cape Town with the highlight being a cable car ride to the top of Table Mountain. Our guide for the excursion – Sterling – advised us that it should be about an hour’s wait once we reached the cable car station on the side of the mountain. Prior to that we drove around the business district of Cape Town as he gave us a sketchy overview of life in South Africa after the death of Nelson Mandella.
Unemployment is currently around 35% – which has contributed to higher crime for obvious reasons. Public transportation via train and bus is not reliable and not to be trusted so the blue collar workers who live outside the city must use vans to commute to and from work. The cost of this service is roughly 30% of their wage which doesn’t leave much for other necessities. The government does not have a majority from any one party so they have cobbled together a group of representatives with differing views to run the government. This has been the case for about a year – it appears to be stable but doesn’t make for speedy decisions. Sterling’s comment was that the government needs to create more public works jobs to get the unemployment rate down.
During our drive around the city we learned about the heritage of Cape Town in particular and were shown some of the historical buildings and areas established by the Dutch. During the drive we saw damage to the parliament building that occurred in 2022 when a lone arsonist was able to bypass all the security and start a fire that resulted in damage of $5 billion South African rands (about $250 million US dollars). The government has not had the funds to make the repairs yet but hopes to within the next couple years.
We drove up a main street which leads to Table Mountain and Signal Hill. As we drove higher the size of Table Mountain began to sink in – it is a massive rock structure with a nearly vertical face and a flat top. Rather than a gently sloping cable ride like Sugarloaf in Rio this cable ride would be very vertical. We drove along the face of the mountain on a road that continued well beyond the cable car station. As we approached the station the bus stopped, we exited and walked to the end of the line waiting for a ride to the top.
Remember Sterling had said it was an hour wait for the ride. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. Seems the weather on Tuesday was not the greatest so people who had tickets to ride that day showed up on Wednesday plus a large percentage of the Magnifica’s passengers. As a result, the actual wait time was 3 hours. It was not overly hot but the sun was out and you stood in line – not many places to sit during that 3 hour wait. The final half hour was climbing stairs to get to the level of the cable cars which added to the physical stress of the wait.
We reached the point of entry for a cable car. Sterling had told us that we would ride as a group. That didn’t happen. We were split so once on the top we were for all intents and purposes on our own. He gave us a meeting time and point and left the management of the time on top to each of us.
The cable cars to Table Mountain are round and on the inside they have a circular disc the occupants stand on. During the journey up or down that disc rotates theoretically to give the occupants a 360 degree view. Sounds like a nice idea but there is a catch – you can’t hold onto anything during the ride. After standing for 3 hours to get on the ride there were many of us who were having some difficulty standing erecting on a rotating surface. In my opinion the car could have been designed with a railing but I wasn’t consulted.
Was the ride worth the wait? If we had known the time involved before the wait began I would say “No”. But as we were already on top, “Yes” – the view was spectacular – and the weather was great. Good visibility (except for the smog in Cape Town) out to sea and over any area you wished to look. There are several photos and videos from the top that you can see show a great day for viewing.
There were black birds flying in the area that looked like they had wings tipped with gold. I tried to take photos to identify them and was somewhat successful. You’ll find a sequence of 4 photos of a red-winged starling in today’s media. I think the color is more gold but you decide. They look very colorful when in flight.
Of course there was a gift shop at the top. When we were standing below waiting to come up Jan noticed a flower we like and had only seen one other place on Earth – the West slopes of Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui. That flower is the protea. She remembered when we saw these flowers in Hawaii we were told they had come to the Hawaiian Islands from Africa. At the top of Table Mountain there was a sign that showed the unique biome in the area of Cape Town. The protea is one of the plants that makes this area unique. In the gift shop Jan found pots we could take home for the King and Queen protea plants. Hopefully our almost green thumbs and a strong Southern exposure in our study at home will allow these pots to yield small protea bushes (I hope they don’t want to grow to their 2-3 meter height). We also found a t-shirt to remind us of Table Mountain.
We took the cable car down to the station and as we were exiting the car Jan began to slump and head for the floor. A man behind her caught her and with the help of cable car personnel helped her to a seat inside the cable car waiting area. With the long wait in the sun it appears she became dehydrated and light-headed. Despite her objections, a wheel chair was brought and she was wheeled outside to board our excursion bus (drinking plenty of water on the way).
Upon our return to the ship I took a few more photos of Table Mountain from the balcony and set the camera to take a time lapse as we left the port. Time lapse turned out pretty good and even showed some of the sunset. Later I was able to get a photo of Table Mountain illuminated and the lights of Cape Town on below it – I like that shot.
This evening’s entertainment was a trio – a male pianist/singer and 2 women singers. They sang songs about Africa that reminded me of an album Paul Simon did years ago with African singers titled “Under African Skies”. Jan thinks the pianist may have been the songwriter for what they played. We liked the sound of the music as did those in the theatre tonight.
At sea tomorrow as we sail to Namibia.
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