So finally I have reached the end of my Cape Town photos! I had so many I didn’t want to jam them all in to one post. Or two, or even three…. But this is the last one, I promise you! And in good time too as it won’t be long before we’re off again on another adventure….

Today’s post will be a bit of a mish-mash – just those leftover pictures that I couldn’t fit in anywhere else, but that help tell the story of our trip. Like this one for example:

This picture was taken in Camps Bay, a magificent stretch of beach, backed by the glorious mountains and lapped by the clearest blue icy sea. It was a gorgeous place and the children paddled, ran, climbed, and rock-pooled with glee while I snapped this picture of a cute mummy goose and her goslings. I just thought it was funny that the geese were swimming in salt water. Is that normal? I don’t think so!

And just to prove how beautiful Camps Bay was, here are three more pictures from the beach:

Another place we enjoyed visiting was Hout Bay, a fishing town round the corner somewhere from central Cape Town (I never did really get my bearings while we were there). We had been told that the best fish and chip shop in South Africa was in Hout Bay – a rough-and-ready place called Snoekies, where you imagined the fish was bought straight in off the boats. The fish certainly was good – as were the chips. But sorry, it still wasn’t as good as our fish and chip shops back home. And what is it with the ketchup here – next time, I’m bringing my own bottle of Heinz!

Close to Snoekies we had a walk along the pier, where my youngest daughter was absolutely delighted to be able to feed this seal by hand:

We saw a lot of seals while we were in Cape Town and Hermanus, but this one was certainly the friendliest. I think the seagull in the photo is hoping for a bit of the action as well 🙂

As well as feeding the seals, we also watched the fishing boats being unloaded. It was great to see a genuine, working fishing trade still in full-action – and although obviously knackered from what was probably either a very early start or a long day at sea, all the fishermen and women working on the pier was as happy and cheery as could be:

While I live here in South Africa, I am always on tbe look out for fun things to photograph, including signs to make you smile. Here are a couple I took on this trip:

And finally, just because you can never have too many penguins:

To read my other Cape Town posts please go to Kirstenbosh Botanical Gardens, Penguins and Whales, and Table Mountain.

It’s iconic. You have to do it. And so we did – the first morning we arrived in Cape Town we were up early and straight up that mountain. The one that we had first glanced from the plane as we flew in from Johannesburg the afternoon before:

We had also got some great shots of the mountain from the V&A Waterfront on our first evening in town – the area stuffed full of restaurants and shops which attracts huge crowds and which was hosting a big-screen showing of the Wales vs South Africa match that evening. I think we were the only Wales supporters in the vicinity…

We had no idea what to expect in terms of queues etc when we arrived at the bottom of the mountain on a sunny Sunday morning, about half an hour before the cable car that takes you to the top was due to open. There are other ways to get up there – namely, walking. And had our children been a little older and a little less moany this is something I would have loved to have attempted. But given we were dealing with a pair of seven-year-old legs and a ten-year-old who will run around a football pitch for hours on end but whinges on a ten minute stroll to the shops, we decided the electric version was the only way up.

So after a relatively short wait in the line along with a motley collection of tourists from around the world (it feels strange being amongst tourists – this isn’t something that really happens in Pretoria), we bought our tickets and got into the round car. These cars are huge – I think each carries 65 people, so although it seemed like there were a long queue, it went down pretty fast. The other thing about the car that I hadn’t realised is that they rotated – at least, the floor rotated but the windows stayed still. Like one of those 1970’s revolving restaurants that were all the rave for a while. Anyway it was great fun and made sure you got to see every view possible without having to move from your spot.

When we reached the top we headed straight for the cafe as we hadn’t yet had any breakfast. However, it was hard not to get distracted by the views:

Breakfast wasn’t a great success – they had some sort of buffet system where you paid by weight. But quite honestly it took such a long time to go through the process, the food was cold when we eventually sat down to eat. Cold scrambled eggs – not a good thing. We should have just ordered a coffee as there was no arguing with the fact that this must be one of the best breakfast views in the world!

Once we had eaten as much as we could face, we had a stroll around the area closest to the cable car. There were plenty of short walks you could do, as well as longer ones, and we made sure we saw the view over the city from every angle.

There is also a fair amount of wildlife at the top of the mountain. As well as the fat dassies sunning themselves on rocks which I have already mentioned in a previous Cape Town post, we snapped pictures of some of these handsome fellas:

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the views and made our way down the mountain – probably not a bad idea as the top was starting to get a little over-crowded with Japanese and other tour groups….

Near Table Mountain is another stunning viewpoint called Signal Hill. So called because they used to signal weather warnings to ships from its pointy top (and where they now fire the famous noonday gun from), it is also now known for the paragliders that launch from it’s heady heights. Paragliding is a bit of a “thing” in our family as it is my husband’s passion. He hadn’t brought his “wing” with him due to baggage restrictions on the flight down so could only watch enviously as glider after glider took off in front of us:

But Signal Hil wasn’t just about paragliding and stunning views – the foliage at the top was pretty spectacular too. This really is the most photogenic country!

And yet time and time again we just kept coming back to the views. After all, you really just can’t argue with scenery like this:

You can read my other Cape Town posts here (Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens) and here (Penguins and Whales)