Our plane landed on Saturday morning. I had a wonderful weekend here. The weather is quite beautiful and the scenery here is lovely. My guest house in Rondebosch is within walking distance of the University of Cape TOwn. I met Sarah in the little town and she showed me her house and I met some of her housemates, girls from several American universities. They are a lovely group and quite compatible. in some ways the peopel who select such a destination have already determined that they will have something in common and they seem to get along very well.
We toured the university which was built by Cecil Rhoades. It crowns the hill overlooking Cape Town. Sarah wanted me to see everything on Saturday, so we went up Table Mountain, the splendid flat-topped mountain which is an important landmark in Cape Town. It is a steep climb even in a car and then took a cable car to the summit. When Sarah came here in High School her group hikes up - an all day journey. But the cable car is beautiful and it rotates during the ascent, and features glass on all sides. Actually, the cable car has a website and you can see the view from the homepage if you google Table Mountain Cable car.
From the top of Table Mountain you can see the water around the city and the whole city at your feet. It is a spectacular view. We spent an hour hiking around on the top and then went down again. That night Sarah invited some friends to dinner with us on the waterfront. It was a great way to meet her friends and have several hours together to get acquainted.
They were quite happy to pile into the back of the rented car. People all have small cars here and think nothing of sqeezing in. The biggest challenge so far has been the driving. I had no idea how disorienting it might be to have to learn to re-think the driving, and spend so much conscious energy on something which has been done somewhat unconsciously for close to 40 years. I still need prompts when I make a turn so that I don't make the mistake of entering on the wrong side of the road into a line of on-coming traffic. But the people here have been very helpful and I have only dinged the hubcaps a few times so far. It is sort of comical, when I get past the anxiety.
Labels: Table Mountain draft by Susan 1:45:00 AM Delete
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