April 6, 2010: Managed to wake early enough to enjoy breakfast properly, even if the cook screwed up my ham and cheese omelet order. (Egg was already cooked thoroughly, so she just placed the diced ham on top and folded the egg.) Too early in the morning to be confrontational, so I let it pass.Table Mountain weather report was still same as yesterday's, so it's fingers crossed it'll change before the day ends, 'coz it's our last day and our last chance to go up there. For now our plan is to do a perimeter tour of the island, similar to what my group did in Taiwan and literally drive along Capetown's edge. (During the drive we had a good view of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was jailed. Morgan Freeman was nowhere to be found.)
After a brief photostop along the coastline, we went to the docks for the Nauticat Launch Cruise, (courtesy of Drumbeat Charters yes I'm reading from the brochure) to see some seals at Duiker Island. When we arrived at the docks several vendors were busy setting up their makeshift giftshop/tents and wares. While Tammy was buying our tickets, 3-Ku and I were looking around some more and came across a huge stray seal. Fer reals, it just crawled out of the ocean, moving fast, or at least at a moderate pace in our direction, simultaneously fascinating (Wonder how fast it goes) and terrifying (Holy crap it's following us) me. A (apparently) homeless man wanted to charge us R5 for taking a picture of and with his "pet." I was of course dubious of the guy's claim of guardianship, but 3-Ku obliged him anyway. I asked the lady at the boat ticket booth about their Harbor Odd Couple, and she said that the seal keeps coming back instead of living w/ its own kind because the homeless guy keeps feeding it.
Alright, time to get on the boat and see non-homeless seals.
We drove around again for another hillside view of the coastline (along the way we thought we saw the fins of a whale's tail --strangely immobile for some reason--, but it turned out to be a buoy), then went to Boulders near Simon's Town to see what seals sometimes have for lunch: penguins. The colony has some of the birds in nesting shelters laid out across Foxy Beach, w/ a few of them waddling under the boardwalk. African Penguins are midgets compared to their Arctic Emperor cousins, but that just makes them cuter.
While Achi Arlen and I were walking down the boardwalk I noticed a cute Asian girl walking ahead us look over her shoulder a couple of times in our direction. From there I deduced she was Pinoy, or at least understood Tagalog. Later while setting up for our Nth groupshot I asked her and her other female companion out of the blue "Taga saan kayo," to which they said "Manila, po," the po making me feel old, not respected. ;)
Tammy receives an SMS: Table Mountain is open for business! But not so fast, we still have lunch, the Cape of Good Hope and a Lighthouse to visit before that grand finale.
We stopped at the Fish Hoek Galley Restaurant for lunch, w/c consisted of one lobster for each of us, with French fries, buttered rice and fish kebab on the side. Some of us opted to order their home-brand Appletiser/Grapetiser sparkling soda to wash it all down. From my window seat I caught sight of a hobbling one-legged pigeon, a mom letting her baby frolic on the beach in her birthday suit, lots of seagulls (the real rats w/ wings, IMO), and someone flying a kite so big you could've had someone paraglide on it. As we were finishing up our meal, a huge group of Chinese tourists came in, w/ their tour leader having to boss everyone about just to get them to sit down. Most of them ordered beer instead of the "fruitisers," or just drank from their plastic jugs filled w/ tea.
Next stop: Cape of Good Hope, literally the lower leftmost butt-end of the African Continent (rightmost butt-end would be Cape Point). Had we stayed longer I would've wanted to climb the steps moving up that hill behind us in this picture to the left. We did the next best thing by going up to highly-situated spots, but w/ vehicular assistance.
First was the lighthouse at the aforementioned Cape Point, but their much-touted "Flying Dutchman Funicular" (or hillside cable car) was on the fritz, leaving us to line up and ride the Driving African Mercedes Van, instead. When we reached our stop we found out that we still had to climb up a blessed number of step before reaching the lighthouse. Finally, those trips to the Great Wall (and that time the power went out in my office building and I had to climb up 19 floors to get to work) are finally gonna pay off.
At the top the doors leading into the lighthouse were locked (seems tourists can't resist flicking on the light switches), but 2 other things got my attention up there. One was a 10-foot rock situated in front on the lighthouse that seemed to have no business being there other than to be a rocky canvass/quasi guestbook for those w/ pen/chalk/Whiteout at hand, or be climbed by those tempted to do so, like yours truly, which I did. From up the rock I saw my groupmates having groupshots taken by a special road-sign that pointed out where other major cities are and how far, in case you ever find yourself by the lighthouse and wanted to jump into the ocean for a swim to, say, Sydney but needed to know how far (11,642 KM, btw).
Our second assisted climb was the one we were all waiting for: Table Mountain. We made it w/ almost an hour left 'til the place closed. One long queue later we were in another waiting area w/ 54 other tourists to ride the 65-pax capacity Cableway (Male operator's name: Blondie. Seriously.) Going up at 10m/second the cable car was also moving in a slow clockwise direction, giving us the 360° view of the town, and some nutty free-climbers too impatient to wait in line for the Cableway.
When we got to the plateau area the air was chilly and the winds nippy, but a half-hour later I wanted to remove my jacket w/ the sudden rise in temperature. We were up so high the weather was fluctuating as we spoke, and the park people need to sound a horn to tell people to come down because of approaching high winds. The views were unimaginable, the numbness in my fingers, slightly bearable. Some in the group opted to wait in the presumably warmer cafe or gift shop, but the rest of opted to see more while the sun was still visible. It was also our last chance to get some wacky shots in honor of my Beijing days, like this one...
or this one...
For our Last Supper we ate at the Wang Thai Restaurant located at the V&A Youknowwhere. As popular spots go, there was one restaurant inside the mall doesn't seem to be run out of customers, and this was Willoughby & Co., a local sushi restaurant. Its ironic tagline, "It's All in the Name," didn't exactly invoke images of sashimi or maki like Kimpura, Saisaki or even Teriyaki Boy would. Hell, I thought it was like a British TGIFriday's.
Back at the hotel we started to pack. Lo and behold I plugged in the netbook on a whim, and it was working again. Made up for lost time in browsing and blogging, w/c in turn ate up any sleeptime I had left. (Hell with it, we were leaving the place in 6 hours, tops, and I can sleep on the plane.)
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