Beautiful Cape Town 🇿🇦

For the past four days, we have been exploring the very bottom of South Africa (and the African continent!) -Cape Town and it’s surroundings. 

Cape Town is situated on the SW coast and is in the ‘city bowl’ surrounded by three mountains-Lion’s Head, Devil’s Peak, and Table Mountain-affectionately owned by Caperownians as ‘mother mountain’ or simply ‘their mountain.’ She resides in the background of every photo taken in the city-a constant presence in city life.

We squeezed every moment of adventure we could out of our time here! Each day had three acts! On day one, after picking up our rental car and taking a minute to get my ‘lefty’ driving sea legs, we headed over to Lion’s Head for a morning climb. Lion’s Head Summit trail is POPULAR (BUSY!) but I understand why-you get 360 degree views of the city and coastline, and our route utilized chains and staples on the way up, which is an 1141’ elevation gain over 2.8 miles:

After a HOT hike, we drove west to Stellenbosch wine country to visit warm people, beautiful countryside, AMAZING FOOD, and my personal favorite wines.

These are 17th century Dutch plantations, part of South Africa’s complicated history. We learned so much this week about how the incredibly diverse population navigated their colonized-then-apartheid past, and now navigates the future (more on this later.)

Visiting these beautiful estates, I feel how important it is to acknowledge their origins, while enjoying their gorgeous wines.

Returning back to Cape Town, we enjoyed a walk to the waterfront, and dinner at the hotels brings an end to day one. A good start!