Final Africa Chapter

I can't believe what a dork I am. It's a good thing that we took pictures in Africa, or I would have forgotten everything that happened by now. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to finish these blog entries, but better late than never, right?

On our 7th day in Africa, we spent the day sightseeing in Capetown. Capetown is absolutely beautiful and reminded me a lot of San Diego. We had a great tour guide who took us all over the area. Our first stop was Table Mountain. When we got there, we were to ride this tram to the top.


I don't know if you can get the big picture, but the Tram goes WAY up, very fast, while rotating 360 degrees. It's a great ride if you aren't a chicken, but cluck, cluck, cluck! I am such a hen.

I hate both of these pictures, but I had to put them in because they show you how totally nervous I was headed up on the tram. Although I knew intellectually that I was safe, I was really scared. (What a baby!)

This is the view out of one of the windows of the tram. Notice that I'm not looking. :-)

This gives you a pretty good idea of how high we were and what the angle of ascent was.

The view from the top was spectacular. (I was fine once I was out of the tram :-)

After we did Table Mountain, we went down to the Waterfront to do some tourist shopping. My dad is the best at this, so we all just kind of followed him. He's a great bargainer.

Next stop was the Cape of Good Hope. I still find it hard to believe that I was actually there. As a kid, I read so many adventure novels in which the hero or heroine had to navigate the Cape of Good Hope. I never dreamed as a child that one day I would stand right there. It was so cool.

This is all of us at the top. Kendra, Mom, Dave, Dad, me, Abby, and Karin. Oops, no Joyce. She must be taking the picture.

Baboons were everywhere. They are like squirrels or rabbits around here.

I don't know if you can see the baby, but there is an entire baboon family on this poor guy's car roof. It was completely caved in.

As we walked out of this building, my mom was carrying a bag of dried fruit.
A baboon ran up to her, fullspeed, jumped up on her, grabbed her bag of fruit, jumped down, and ran off. It all happened so fast that no one got a picture of it, but they are pretty bold.
There are employees that have the job of walking around with big sticks trying to scare the baboons away so they will not frighten the tourists. We weren't scared, just startled.
(Well, maybe Mom was scared. The rest of us thought it was funny.)

After we went up to the lighthouse, we drove down to the Cape Beach. It was beautiful. A storm was blowing in, so we got a little rained on, but it was worth it.

True to form, Dave had to walk out to the very edge to take a picture.

Our last stop of the day was the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. It was almost dark and they were ready to close, but we had heard that they were incredibly beautiful, so we paid our money, put on our raincoats and ran through the gardens.

Notice that there are no men in this shot. They were smart and stayed in the car. We got really wet and didn't really see much. (It was pretty dark.) But, it was a fun experience.

That was the end of our time in Africa. The next morning we flew out for London. Next post - London in two days!!!