Day 13: Capetown

After a quick breakfast at the guest house, we back to the waterfront, but walked inland a bit until we hit this market just in front of the clock tower. Ming has a special kind of radar that seeks out markets and trinket shopping regardless of where we are.

We bought a pair of gloves (it was a little chilly), and then headed toward the District 6 museum. The museum tries to tell the story of life in District 6 before the apartheid regime forced all of the black and coloured people out of the city center and into the surrounding townships. Within a short period, the former residents lost their entire communities and their everyday way of living. It's just one highlighted example of the injustices of the apartheid regime.

From there it was over to the Pan-African market for more shopping. The Pan-African market collects more than 30 vendors with hand-crafted goods from all over Africa. (Ian was kind of complaining the entire time...but that didn't stop him from picking out some stuff as well!)

I'm sorry to report that we completely failed on the bargaining. We didn't realize it was a bargain place at first...but then halfway through the visit we saw these cool bone-carved salt and pepper shakers being offered for 120...and eventually he sold them to us for 40. Hmm...I guess Chinese-style "go for 25% of the quoted price" continues!

It was a nice clear day, so we finally got our first full view of table mountain.

When we got to the cable car that takes you up, however, we found out it was closed due to “gale-force” winds. Fortunately, the cable car is only a 5 minute drive from the guesthouse so we had plenty more chances to catch the cablecar experience. Even the view from the ground is amazing.

It started clouding over late in the day.

But the sky over the town was almost cloudless. (Ian was very proud of himself for climbing on top of that rock there in the picture and tried to get me to stand on top of a pole so that I could get a better shot of him...thank goodness for the tiltable screen on the camera!)

South Africa's weather this time of year can best be described as: undecided. We were pooped after the day of walking around, so we decided to stay in for the evening. Tomorrow -- time for a drive around the peninsula!