Cape Town South Africa Kirstenbosch

Kirstenbosch is a botanical garden which is said to be the best in Africa. Travel and Leisure magazine rates it the #2 botanical garden in the world. The traveldk.com web site rates them at #4. The gardens are a UNESCO World Heritage site. I visited the garden and came away quite impressed. They were huge and they had to be as good as any botanical gardens I have ever been in.

Cape Town South Africa Couchsurfing Friends

CS means Couch Surfing. The people in the picture are me (left), Stina (right) who is from Sweden and had an apartment in Cape Town, and Carmen who is from Uruguay and is staying with Stina for a few days while she is in Cape Town. We got together for lunch one day and the next day decided to spend the day at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. It was a marvelously beautiful day and we had a great time there. It’s really nice to make new friends. I try to cultivate new friends through CS whenever I get the chance. It’s a project I believe in.

Cape Town South Africa Backpack

This is a picture of one of the hostels where I stayed. This one is the better of the two. That didn’t mean I stayed there after two nights. I didn’t. I left for 3 reasons: (1) the noise was bad at night; (2) the room cost was relatively high; and (3) the internet was not free. I cut my cost by more than half by moving one block. The cost went from $28 to $12.50. It was still noisy at night but the cost has much more reasonable and the internet was free and it was fast enough. I believe that I could have moved to a larger dorm room (more beds) and cut the cost down to about $15 at this hostel, The Backpack, if I had tried to do so. I think I would have stayed at The Backpack had they done something about the noise because it was a very modern and clean hostel. I didn’t complain. I’ve complained about noise at hostels before and it never did any good. Now, I just move on to one where I hope will be less noisy.

Cape Town South Africa Condos

Some of the people who live at the beach at Cape Town have it pretty nice. I’m sure their condos are like condos at any other beach property anywhere else in the world. They’re relatively expensive. They’re smallish. The best ones have ocean views and the very best ones are higher up in the building and have a patio. The very best patios are the large ones big enough to entertain a football team.

Cape Town South Africa Ticket Sales

It was amazing. I wanted to go to see Robben Island, the notorious place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 26 years. Unfortunately, all the available tours were booked for over two weeks. I had been told this by others that were staying at the same hostel that I was staying in even before I went to see if I could get a ticket. But, I had to try. When I approached the ticket counter, I saw no one in line line but did see four persons behind the counter doing anything but selling tickets. I could tell they were really bored. The whole thing struck me as ridiculously funny. Why were there four people selling tickets for a tour that was sold-out for two weeks? I guess people need jobs. So I walked up to the counter and no one paid any attention to me for the longest time. I guess they were so used to having nothing to do that they don’t know what a potential customer looks like.

Cape Town South Africa Stadium

The Cape Town Stadium is a hard thing to miss in Cape Town if you are anywhere near it. I’m sure they play soccer there, but I’m not sure what else. I assume they have cricket matches, but I know so little about cricket that I’m not sure where it’s played. Anyway, they did have the FIFA World Cup finals at this stadium in 2010. The stadium has a capacity of 64,100. Perhaps one of the coolest things about the stadium is that there is an elevated Fan Walk to the stadium from the downtown section of Cape Town so that the fans going to the stadium from the downtown section where many of the restaurants, bars, hotels, and hostels are located do not have to walk in the traffic.

Cape Town South AfricaSkyline

Cape Town is a large city with an estimated population of around 3.5 million people. I consider that to be a lot of people. The city is quite modern with a substantial sprinkling of older 20th century architecture. This picture was taken from the Castle of Good Hope, a 17th century structure that gives away the age of the city. It was build by the Dutch. Speaking of the Dutch, I was surprised how so many things that are in South Africa bear Dutch names. I had always imagined South Africa to have been a British colony, but it becomes evident very quickly that Dutch names tend to be at least of equal importance in the country. I found that a bit telling. Cape Town is a large city with an estimated population of around 3.5 million people. I consider that to be a lot of people. The city is quite modern with a substantial sprinkling of older 20th century architecture. This picture was taken from the Castle of Good Hope, a 17th century structure that gives away the age of the city. It was build by the Dutch. Speaking of the Dutch, I was surprised how so many things that are in South Africa bear Dutch names. I had always imagined South Africa to have been a British colony, but it becomes evident very quickly that Dutch names tend to be at least of equal importance in the country. I found that a bit telling.

Cape Town South Africa City Hall

It was one of those classic old buildings that draw me to them. I like the monuments and structures that mankind builds to embody the soul of the species in a semi-permanent temporal state. When I first saw it I wanted to know what it was. I could tell it wasn’t just another building. Granted, it needed some loving care, but I still liked it. When I asked a traffic officer what it was he told me it was City Hall. He also pointed to the place on the steps of the building where Nelson Mandela addressed the crowd out front when he was released from prison. I wondered if the officer had been there when it happened.