We arrive in Cape Town in the early morning. The view off the ship is of Table Mountain, the famous landmark flat-topped mountain overlooking the city of Cape Town.

Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa (Pretoria is the administrative capital and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital) and is the second d largest city in South Africa after Johannesburg.

But today we are off to the Cape of Good Hope and to visit the Boulders Penguin Colony in Simon’s Town.

The coast road is stunning and winds its way to the west side to Cape Point and to the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of the peninsula. 

The views from Hout Bay are golden beaches, mountains and azure bays. Jaw dropping.

The Chapman’s Peak drive which is carved in the side of a cliff above the sea is reminiscent of driving the cliffs of Amalfi and makes for a hair-raising ride.

We arrive in Simon’s Town, a naval town but also where we disembark to walk over to Boulders Beach to see the comical African penguins colony.

They are the only breeding colony in Africa. So penguins in hot Africa? They actually feed on the cold waters coming up from Antarctica and on land they burrow in the sands emerging at dusk and dawn and also use the pink glands above their eyes to cool their blood down and also hold their flippers away from their body to release heat. 

Fun fact: they choose a mate for life and return to the same place to breed. And they can bite!

We see plenty sitting on hatchlings or eggs.

Our lunch break at a local restaurant called Seaforth Restaurant has the best fried calamari we have ever eaten. Ever. The view is also memorable.

And try the Malva pudding, a South African dessert. It’s like a light sponge cake that contains apricot jam served with a custard type sauce. It’s served hot with ice cream. So yummy!

Next, we drive to Cape Point also known as Cape of Storms where so many shipwrecks lay at the bottom of the ocean because of the gale-force winds and submerged reefs.

We take the funicular up to the lighthouse and just as we arrived, a cloud sweeps over the area blanketing almost everything in our view but thankfully it dissipates as quickly as it came in.

Not far below, we drive over to the Cape of Good Hope, the most south-western point of the African continent.

Fact: Cape of Good Hope is not where the Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean. That is actually Cape Agulhas, the most southern point (as opposed to most south-western point) of South Africa. And you can’t actually see with the naked eye the meeting point.

Our final stop was to be the botanical gardens but as we roll along on the bus, we can hear some grinding noise and smell burning.

The bus driver pulls over thankfully near a nice mall and the guide explains that they will need to call for another bus as the brakes were kaput. Good thing we weren’t on the twisted cliff road from this morning! But we are an hour away from Cape Town so a new bus has to come from there as well which means 2 or plus hours to return to ship with an ETA of 8pm. It’s the last night on the ship and people have to pack their belongings to put outside their cabin door by 10pm so we decided to bail on the tour and pull out the trusty Uber app.
It takes a few tries to get one to take us but within half an hour we are on our way with another couple who asked to join us. The cost? Twenty dollars for an hour trip! So cheap.

As we get back on board, we look out at Table Mountain again and we see a giant white cloud envelop the top but seems to cascade down it like a river fall or maybe we should just call it a cloud fall.

It’s the end of our cruise journey that started in Doha, Qatar but tomorrow we will be chilling in the wine country of Franschhoek about an hour from Cape Town.