Up Table Mountain with 63 of Our Closest Friends

We were able to sleep in this morning but the mattresses in our room are so uncomfortable that we were up early. I bought tickets for the aerial cableway using a mobile app. We missed this the first day we were here due to the Gun Run. The aerial cableway was closed down yesterday due to extreme winds. This was our last chance. The weather was beautiful and the visibility was reported to be wonderful. Every other day we have been here there has been a cloud cover over the top of Table Mountain. The locals call this the "tablecloth".

We didn't hurry getting ready to go. We are tied of hurrying. By the time we got an Uber and made it to the cableway it was 9:30 am. This was the line you stand in before you cross the street and get into the queue.

It took us an hour and forty-five minutes to get into the cable car. We entertained ourselves with people watching; staring at the top of this incredible mountain that seems to rise out of the sea and taking photos back down to the city.

We had seen it as we flew in on Sunday and got a sense of its magnificence then. 

We were loaded into our car with 63 people with whom we had been sharing the line.  The ride up was exhilarating and way too short. The floor revolves so you get different perspectives throughout the ride.

We even got to see some of the hikers/rock climbers making their way to the top.

The view from the top is even more amazing. Here you can see the size of the soccer stadium that is not far from our hotel.

You can walk your way around to all sides of the mountain. Here we are looking down towards the Cape of Good Hope where we "hope" to go tomorrow...

...along this winding cliff road.

We say some dassies in the rocks.

We could have stayed up there much longer but the threat of another long line going down and the promise of a planned "load shedding" (think brown out) made us hurry back down. There was no line back this early in the day.

We got an Uber down to the City Bowl area of Cape Town. We ate lunch at Tiger's Milk. Then we walked around poking our heads into shops. We looked at fabrics, African beads and amazing masks. I found a mask from the Congo that reminded me of a picture my parents took of a witch doctor in Nigeria in the 1960s. It only cost $80 but frugality won out. We stopped in a chocolate shop that is fair trade and vegan. It turns out that Gayle and I really like dairy in our chocolate.

When our Uber dropped us back at our hotel we walked across the street to the Sea Point Promenade we can see from our window. We see a constant stream of joggers, lovers holding hands and people walking their dogs. It was low tide and we enjoyed sometime smelling the ocean.

It also gave us a perspective of our hotel with Lion's Head, Signal Hill and the Green Point Lighthouse. I pointed  an arrow at our room.

Tonight we had dinner reservations at Marco’s African Place. You can eat crocodile or ostrich while listening to a band sing and dance. Our waiter brought over a chalk board with the specials for the evening. Gayle doesn't like to eat anything that has the appearance of meat. When the waiter described one of the dishes as a full sheep's head minus the brains she had to check out. I got shrimp with a Xhosa dish of beans and corn. Gayle got vegetarian pasta.

The music was exceptional. The dancing was even better. We left at 10:30 and the place was still packed and still hopping.