Sightseeing Table Mountain and South Africa Wine Country

Our third and last day in Cape Town started again with an early breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. Here we learned the difference in Flapjacks, and Pancakes, at least the way they are served in South Africa. Yesterday I had ordered pancakes, and they were actually crepes, while today I found out flapjacks are what we in the US call pancakes. Who knew? Anyway we enjoyed our breakfast complete with fresh fruit from the buffet area. The picture below is the pancakes (crepes) I ordered yesterday; sorry no flapjacks pics from today.

At 8:15am, we were off for our full day of touring. There were two tours offered; one to nearby Robben Island, and Alcatraz of sorts where Mandella had once been a prisoner, or a winery tour and lunch pairing at one of the vineyards. If you know us well, we chose the later of course! And we were not disappointed at all!

The tour was actually two parts; the morning tour was a trip up to Table Mountain, which we could view from our room, and the second half of the day was the wine tasting tour and lunch.

When we arrived at Table Mountain around 8:45am, there were already large crowds of people lined up to take the cable car up to the top of the mountain. The two cable cars are quite large though, so the wait was only about 20 minutes until we boarded the oval shaped cable car. Looking up the mountain it was quite steep, and looking at the wires hanging down (apparently with no visible support columns from our vantage point) we had to wonder what we were getting ourselves into.

No worries though, it was quite a nice ride up and back. The car is arranged with windows all the way around it, and there is a raised center platform you can stand on to see over people’s heads for a better view. DOS and I boarded and stood right in the front facing the hill we would soon go up, but unknown to us and everyone else, the floor actually revolves! Apparently to give everyone a better view, it was at first a bit startling going slowly around in a circle while going up the steep lift.

From the top of Table Mountain, we were rewarded with some extraordinary views of the city, beaches, and even hikers below. Yes, there were actually quite a few hikers that were brave enough (if not crazy enough) to hike up Table Mountain.

We took the nature walk along the top of the mountain, getting different views as we walked along.

We finished up at the gift shop of course, but due to our intra-Africa flight restrictions, we only bought some small and lightweight items.

The second half of our sightseeing day was a visit to two different wineries, with a gourmet lunch wine pairing at the second one. As we drove thru the wine country, we learned South Africa has over 300 wineries! No, we didn’t have time for all of them, but that would be a fun future trip coming back and staying in wine country.