Stormy Travels: Cape Point

We woke up around 7am this morning since we forgot to shut the blinds, and the sun was shining bright. Today, our plan was to explore the coastal roads and visit the Cape of Good Hope also known as the most South-Western point on the African continent! Neither of us was super hungry so we decided to just head out and eat something out and about later. Hunter called for the valet to bring up the car and we headed on our adventure.

To get on the route we wanted to go, we set our GPS to head to Camps Bay. The drive was busy, but quite nice. Hunter's is such a great driver in any situation, it amazes me because I would not be good at driving on the opposite side of the road road on the opposite side of the car! We passed by the Castle again too as it routed us around some morning rush-hour traffic. Once we got on the coastal road by Camps Bay, our next stop brought us to the bronze leopard near Hout Bay. This was actually on the other side of the bay to the fish and chips place we ate at the other night. The lookout was so picturesque!

The Castle of Good Hope

Bronze Leopard

The ocean is just incredible colors here and pictures don't do it justice

Our cute VW Polo!

We then headed to Chapmans Peak Drive. This 9km drive takes you between Hout Bay and Noordhoek and has 114 curves! To say it was stunning is an understatement. This drive is magnificent. To share some history, surveying began in 1914 on the steep cliff edges. The project was going to be expensive, but De Waal, the first administrator of the Cape Province, insisted on the go-ahead with building the road on the cliffs. Work started in 1915 and the first portion of the road was opened in 1919. In 1922, 7 years later, the full route was opened. The road has largely remained the same since its initial construction with some widening taking place on a section in 1962 and a repair to a washed-out section in 1977. In the 2000s the road experienced various rock falls which injured and killed some people, and was closed indefinitely. After extensive work, it was reopened at the end of 2003. In 2004 the newly installed catches for falling rocks were put to use. Then in 2008 the road was closed for major repairs, and reopened in 2009, staying open since then. More information about the engineering and history can be found on their website at https://www.chapmanspeakdrive.co.za/the-drive/engineering.html . Hunter was excited to take me here because he loves finding unique engineering locations to share with me. It was one of the many spots he had researched in advance of this trip, unlike Egypt where I did most the prep work he had taken the lead preparing for this trip since I was busy with work and studying for me engineering exams.

The rock catches

As we exited Chapman's Peak Drive, we were treated to views of Noordhoek Long Beach. The white sand and bright turquoise-blue water was beautiful. It made me want to go jump into the ocean and start a whole sunscreen conversation with Hunter as I don't want to keep burning even with good sunscreen application. Why don't they have a sunscreen fog machine deal where I walk through a cloud and am instantly protected? Anyways, as we continued south, we came across a sign we do not have in the US - baboon crossing! Hunter and I were hoping we'd get to see one, when 2 minutes later we were in a baboon jam! They were being guarded by 3 different people with what appeared to be paintball guns, or something similar. I'm not sure if the guns were for humans or the baboons. There were big ones and babies which were adorable! Two of the babies were wrestling in the road without a care in the world for the traffic, luckily even if their moms weren't watching their human guardians were and we slowly and carefully went around them. After the baboons, we got even closer to Long Beach and took so many more pictures. The water was so blue!

Baboon but!

A whale!

We continued on our drive into the Table Mountain National Park's Cape of Good Hope Drive. The national parks here are run more like forest service units in the US where there might be a dozen areas with different entry rules and fees that are all part of the same national park (Boulder's Beach and the actual Table Mountain that we had both previously visited were a part of this same park). We didn't mind paying another admission fee though as South Africa's national parks were beautiful and well worth supporting. Our first stop brought us to Smitswinkles Bay Viewpoint. Here we also found some informational signs about False Bay and the Fynbos which is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This point is also recognized as the meeting place of marine provinces where the warm, southwest-flowing Agulhas Current/Marine Province of the Indian Ocean meets the colder Benguela Current/ Marine Province of the Atlantic Ocean although where exactly the two oceans meet is a matter of debate.

The turquoise waters always amaze me!

The vegetation is so unique here!

We then stopped at the small visitors center to use the restrooms and read about the area. There was a massive whale skeleton there and some information on the secretive cape mountain zebras we hoped to spot. I spent a lot of time reading about the different zebras in the area. There are actually 4 different kinds and each have unique features like stripes on their belly or thin/thick strips.

Hunter brought our his art skills again, showing where we have driven thus far!

We continued on our drive and decided to head to the old lighthouse first, then work our way back as there was so much to see here! When we arrived we parked the car and spent 10 minutes slathering on sunscreen, again annoyed I didn't have a sunscreen cloud machine! We then headed to the Flying Dutchman funicular. It’s the only commercial funicular of its type in Africa, and takes its name from the local legend of the Flying Dutchman ghost ship! This also saves us the hike up the mountain and for us was included on our Cape Town city pass! From the top of the funicular there were still a few hundred stairs up to the top, but I am glad we didn't have to take the probably thousand from the bottom. We took it easy and enjoyed the breathtaking views at every corner. The old lighthouse isn't used anymore because it's too high and gets hidden in the clouds. This caused a bunch of shipwrecks and eventually, a new lighthouse was constructed further down the cliff closer to the water.

The funiculars work in tandem as one goes down the hill, the other is pulled up the hill. Here is the point at which they cross where one has to take a small side track around the other.

The ocean breezes and views were great and we could see tons of birds and a fishing fleet in the waters to the east where the shark divers we had spent the day prior with will go to look for Mako, or as they're locally known, blue sharks. As we strolled down the stairs we again admired some of the unique local plants of the cape. Although basically antipodal to California the climate is fairly similar and a lot of plants felt almost familiar except with a strange alien twist. It was super cool to be in such a unique part of the world. At the bottom of the funicular was a small café and we decided to see if they had anything that looked good before heading out since we hadn't packed a lunch. Fortunately, much like a lot of restaurants at national parks in the US, they had some locally sourced and delicious-sounding menu options, we both got baguette sandwiches to go and then headed back to our car to find a nice quiet spot for lunch. Hunter took us down a side road by a beach and we pulled over and had lunch watching the waves roll in as it was just approaching high tide. There was also a small rock outcropping with tons of chattering sheep.... I mean seals. Both of us enjoyed our lunches and we were ready to explore the rest of the park.

We had read online that a lot of the wildlife is best viewed on the quieter sideroads and we were determined to explore as many of them as possible with the time we had. Hunter headed back out to the main road and we took the first turn we could down another side road to a different secluded beach. On the way, we saw a giant white and black cross down an unmarked side road and decided to investigate. This was the Bartholomew Dias Cross which was originally erected in this location by the Portuguese government in 1488 as a navigational beacon, when coupled with the nearby Vasco de Gama cross they point towards some of the cape's many navigational hazards. Although there was no signage at the location the crosses were quite impressive and one side of the Dias Cross was painted black although we don't know why. On the way back out to the main road we encountered another car and Hunter had to reverse all the way back to the cross to let them up since the road was so narrow. We eventually got back to the main (side) road and then continued towards our original beach destination. When we got towards the bottom we saw one car sitting kind of in the middle of an otherwise deserted parking lot all by itself which initially seemed very odd. However, once we got closer we realized why. There was a herd of OSTRICHES right on the beach by the parking lot.

Looking back towards the point with the lighthouse we were just at

Weird little ferret animal crossing the road

OSTRICHES!

This one seemed to have an issue with its wing

Can you spot the hidden creature?

After watching the incredibly cool ostriches, we headed onto the next spot, but just as we were leaving, we caught a glimpse of 3 cape elands which are a giant south African antelope!

Eland!

The next stop brought us to buffels bay picnic site and tidal pool. Here we saw a super cool Defender 110 setting up. Hunter was super jealous. It was almost like we were living in a commercial! Continuing on, we stopped at Gifkommetjie, where we came across a group of people discussing invasive plants.

The tidal pool

Land Rover Defender 110

You can see the group of people in the bottom left corner at the Gifkommetjie location

Super cool plant!

After enjoying the beautiful views from Gifkommetjie, which I learned means "little poison bowl" in Afrakans (LOL), we headed down more of the circular drive roadway, eventually coming across another cool local antelope called the bontebok. He was very photogenic and we spent quite some time staring at his beautiful multi-colored face.

We had now seen ostriches, and two of the local antelope species, but still none of the timid but famous Cape Mountain Zebras. Hunter decided to take us down another long side road to look for them. We saw a cute little farm, lots more of the beautiful Fynbos plants, and some more bonteboks, but no zebras. We both carefully scanned our sides of the road the whole way there and back. While we were sad to not have seen a zebra we are surely going to come back to Africa and probably to South Africa for a zebra and other wildlife-focused trip! Since it was now about 3:30pm, we reluctantly decided to head back to the hotel to prepare for our flight home. Sadly it was time to say goodbye to South Africa.

Part of the reason we are leaving a day earlier than originally planned was that during his meeting the other night Hunter had heard there would be an extra section out of Cape Town today direct home to Atlanta. This was the flight from the day before delayed overnight, but a lot of the passengers got put on other flights so it was pretty open which was nice for us because South Africa can be quite tricky to get out of as a non-rev. We left the beautiful Cape Point unit of the Table Mountain National Park, and winded our way north along the coast through Simonstown and past the penguins we had visited yesterday before we quickly got caught up in some of the local evening traffic but slowly and steadily made our way back to the hotel. We finally arrived at the hotel around 5:30pm with plenty of time to shower, pack, and prepare ourselves for the long flight home... or so we thought. While I showered and Hunter folded up his clothes, he happened to check Google Maps and what was normally a 20 min drive to the airport was showing like it was going to be more than an hour due to traffic. This meant we had a lot less time than expected to get ready for our flight. As I got out of the shower Hunter quickly got in and I began frantically packing all the clothes Hunter had laid out into neat little lines for me into our suitcases. I am very good at tetris-ing clothing together and although I didn't have as much time as I normally need I was able to perfectly pack each of our bags back together in seemingly 15 mins flat. Hunter got out of the shower, got dressed, and we headed down to the waiting rental car before heading to the airport. The drive to the airport actually went substantially quicker than Google thought, we are not quite sure why, but the driving times are a lot less accurate here than at home.

Driving back into Cape Town

Table Mountain and Lions Head in the distance

We raced to the airport which fortunately had a BP petrol station right at its entrance. In South Africa, you do not pump your own gas so we sat in the car while a man did it for us and then brought over a card reader on a comically long cord for us to tap. Hunter did the exchange rate later and figured out it was only about $21 of gas, not bad for the 350km or so we had driven! Although it's hard to do all the exchange rates in your head in real time we definitely felt like it was worth it given the freedom we had to explore on our own and at our own pace. We dropped off the rental car at the airport which went very smoothly despite us having rented it from a different location with a return date of tomorrow. They took it back no questions asked and with no drop fee which was very nice of them. This made our whole transfer/afternoon much smoother as otherwise, we would have had to leave Cape Point much sooner to get to the city in time to drop the car off before the city rental car location closed.

Hunter always takes a picture of the dash for our records on fuel and mileage to avoid any issues.

From there we headed inside to the departures area, and found the Delta counters. It was quite the wait and a bit of an adventure but we eventually got cleared and raced through security and customs out to what was initially the wrong gate from our boarding passes we finally found the right one and got loaded onto a bus to go out to our plane. We then sat in the dark for quite a while before being taken out but at least there were some cool Russian cargo planes nearby, definitely don't get to see those at home. There was a lot of adrenaline with the confusion from it being a new station and an extra flight, but we were cleared in Delta One thankfully so we took our seats up front and eagerly waited for the door to shut. Once we taxied out and our wheels were up we were able to breathe a huge sigh of relief and sit back and relax and enjoy the great service on our 16+ hour ultra-long haul flight back to Atlanta.

Waiting in line to check in for our flight

This was our second longest flight ever (in distance) after our flight from ATL to JNB on the way here and was our longest flight ever in terms of duration thanks to the winds en route. Between this flight, JNB, and our ICN flights last summer we have now taken all but one of the ultra-long-haul routes out of ATL! Only the Haneda, Japan one remains, but I am sure we will take care of that sometime!

On board, our crew was super friendly and the food was excellent with some South African flair to the menus. We talked about our time in South Africa and shared some recommendations with them for their future layovers as they all love exploring South Africa during their time there. We landed back in ATL a little after 6am Friday morning which is still just a surreal feeling now that we live in a hub.We were able to quickly clear customs with our global entry and head home for a shower, whereas before we still would have had 2-3 flights and hours and hours to go. We are definitely enjoying the access being employed with Delta in Atlanta provides! Overall Cape Town was another unforgettable trip of a lifetime!