5 Star View from the MV Explorer

We are docked at Eastern Mole 2, Duncan Dock, Port of Capetown, not right next to V&A Waterfront development with the other cruise ship.  And we have to take a shuttle bus every time we want to go into town.  But what a view!  From our portside room (which is not the disembarkation side in this port) we can see Table Mountain, Lion's Head, and Signal Hill reflected in a section of bay!  I totally understand Monet's obsession with light.  Every hour of every day, and sometimes every few minutes, Table Mountain has a different image.

The first morning it was perfectly clear as dawn arrived, and the shadows on the escarpment changed the image every few  minutes. The second morning was clear at first, then a layer of clouds came across in the pattern they refer to as a table cloth on Table Mountain.  The thin layer of clouds resting on the top soon thickened a bit and began spilling over the edge just like a table cloth.  As the clouds spilled down, they dissolved in a wavy pattern.  And after 20 minutes or so, all those clouds receded and the mountain top was clear again.

This morning dawn has come with clouds over the city obscuring all but the one edge of Table Mountain.  The two peaks to the right, Lion's Head and Signal Hill, a bit lower that the 3000 feet of Table Mountain, are still clearly in view.

And the view from the top down onto the MV Explorer is even more spectacular!  We went to the top the first day as part of a city orientation sour from Semester at Sea.  Unfortunately, we waited in a long line because it was the first clear day after several days of rain.  In addition to the usual influx of tourists, there are many extra people in town because of a jazz festival.  But from the top, the view is extraordinary -- looking over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as well as their intersection at the Cape of Good Hope.

From the top is it possible to see Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for much of his 27 years of imprisonment.  It was also possible to see the first fort, the Castle of Good Hope.  This land was originally claimed and settled by the Dutch East India Company as a provisioning location.  Cattle and sheep were grown, and vegetable were raised to provision passing ships.

As with their other operations, the Dutch East India Company relied on slaves to develop their operations.  The farms were small operations with a few slaves each, not the huge plantations seen in other places.  The slaves were more largely from East Asia, with a few from other parts of Africa.  Afrikaans was the creole language that developed as a common language.

Looking up and the mountain, and looking down on Capetown and its environs was a bit of a Batholomew Cubbins experience. It was also a wonderful reminder of my trip here to Capetown with Nick in 2009.  At that point South Africa was desperately getting ready for the World Cup, and everyone was predicting that they would not be ready by 2010.  In fact, they were largely ready, and now the landscape has a large stadium that was not part of Nick's and my view from the top of Table Mountain.