Long Journey Home

 We have travelled about as far away from our home, on the west coast of Canada, as we can. A month's worth of photos is too much to post, but I want to share with you how much fun we had and how we were lucky enough to come face to face with a beautiful continent, and a beautiful city, Capetown. This is one of the most souther spots, the Cape Point of the Cape of Hope (or Cape of Storms, if you like). Our hosts, Anthony and Elizabeth drove us around and showed us the sites of Table Mountain National Park which winds all the way from the city to the point.

 Table Mountain is beautiful and looks over the city, framing the water. We stayed just below Devil's Peak in the area below the University of Cape Town. The late "winter" sun was compelling. We each took several thousand photos. The cable car up the mountain was lots of fun and better than joining the boys on their hike up.

 From the Rhodes Memorial we could see our first glimpses of Africa. The stone pines look so African to me, but they are imported from Italy.

 Kirstenbosch Gardens are stunning and a real draw for our guests who were even more nerdy than us about naming flowers and birds. This is the aloe.

 The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront was great fun and great shopping. Cape Town believes in public art and all over South Africa there are statues of Mandela. We found the people highly integrated and working together to make the city work. Afrikaans is a crazy language and the several indigenous languages were baffling.

 The wine country tour was exciting. I'm not so good at back seat tours and it was socked in with rain, but at Groot Constantia, we were treated to an autumn light. We loved the wines, especially Hanneput dessert wine.

And the campus itself was so beautiful. These are the "jammie steps" in front of Jameson Hall where the students gather. Our friends are both professors there and we had many in depth conversations, D with Anthony in economics, Elizabeth and I about knitting and English Literature. What could be better?