Cape Town completely blew us away…from its spectacular harbor revealing a sparkling new waterfront backed by the magnificent granite cliffs of Table Mountain, Lion Head and Signal Hill all the way out to the point of the Cape of Good Hope! It is like the first time you look into the Grand Canyon or at Half-dome in Yosemite. And what’s more, South Africa’s mountains make our mountains seem like adolescents, relatively speaking, since the Alps are about 32 million years old, the Himalayas 40 million, and our Rockies 60 million, whereas Table Mountain is 260 million years old. Wow! We took a cable car to the summit of Table Mountain (3,570 ft.) for a spectacular panorama of Cape Town itself and the entire tip of South Africa all the way out to the distant cape (photos). We stayed to experience hang-gliding at sunset (photo) and the twinkling city lights at night fall. Capetonians call the clouds that frequently cover Table Mountain, its “tablecloth” (photo). On the first day we took a tour of the coast to see her beautiful bays and sparkling white sand beaches (photo), to visit her lovely wine country for tasting at the historic Groot Constantia Winery (photo) and to take a boat out to Seal Island. It is great fun to see fur seals of all ages in their natural habitat, frolicking in the surf and nuzzling their babies on the rocks (photo).

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