So Many Capes

Today was a day for Capes and below is the Cape of all Capes! In history classes, we’ve always heard of the Cape of Good Hope, which was the highlight of today’s Cape day!



But before that, we started off by waking up in Franschhoek in the Cape Winelands. Here’s a photo of our Melrose Place hotel, also known as the Protea Franschhoek:



After a lovely breakfast, we drove to Tokara Vineyard which was absolutely beautiful. I had researched good wines with beautiful settings while being convenient and Tokara came up in my internet research. Tokara is actually the combined names of the owner’s children, Thomas and Kara. I’ve asked Amanda several times what would be her vineyard name - she hasn’t yet decided. In our travels, we saw Leopard’s Leap which reminded me of Stag’s Leap in Napa. We jokingly came up with Hippo’s Leap inspired by our safari! Here are a few tasting photos from the deck and inside:







We then went outside and explored a little to see the grapes and olive trees, and to get our steps in!







We walked up to this selfie deck. They also asked us to hashtag, so here it is - #tokara:





You can see the edges of Table Mountain from here, but it wasn’t clear enough to see it definitively: 



We then drove over to Babylonstoren which is a 5 star hotel on a working farm with an impressive garden. Our Brazilian safari friends raved about it and Ranger Will endorsed it; so we headed to the Greenhouse restaurant for lunch which we accessed by walking through the impressive gardens:





Look at this massive lavender patch! You could smell so many things in the fragrant garden - it was diverse and well curated:



Here’s a picture of our lunch all sourced from the garden. I had a vegetable grain bowl and Amanda had the forage salad with bread. We also shared a roobois iced tea:



Amanda also managed to sneak in a photo of me taking pictures of our lunch…very funny:



Satisfied with our Cape Winelands tasting and lunch, we decided to drive the 2 hours to the Cape of Good Hope - the most southwestern point of Africa! Also, rounding the Cape of Good Hope successfully was a challenge for the European explorers and as I mentioned earlier, probably one of the most well-known capes of the world. It was called “The Cape” by sailors. 

But it was a race against the clock as we were trying to manage the car rental return and fitting in work calls. But we did it! The national park initially is not at sea level, but rather elevated so we had cool views of the ocean from above, the sky, and the landscape:









We even saw ostriches! We weren’t sure we’d see them on safari and never asked Will about them, so we were shocked to see a handful here:





Then we headed towards sea level and the famous marker where we rushed to take a picture and I asked a Korean man to take our picture:

After taking the photo with the marker, we raced back to Cape Town, the most popular city in South Africa. We made it to the Hertz 15 minutes before closing and dropped off the car. Then we Uber’ed to our hotel, the Protea North Wharf. Our room is huge and bigger than most NYC apartments.

We then headed down to a popular park and promenade and took a selfie in front of a sculpture of Nelson Mandela’s glasses:



For dinner, I wanted to check out the lively V&A Waterfront, which is a popular shopping and dining neighborhood. It’s named after Queen Victoria and Prince Alfred. They had a Time Out Market where I ordered a burger from De Vrije which is a place I had researched in Stellenbosch, so was psyched to see an outpost here: 





Then we returned to the hotel. What a day of Capes - Winelands, Good Hope, and Town! Also what an adventure and the flexibility of the rental car has been so helpful to maximize what we are seeing, and for listening to Prince Harry’s lengthy memoir. We hope to finish the book soon, we only have 2 hours left of 15! It’s also been amazing as he describes his time in Africa, safari, animals, and his passion for the continent!