“Pic of the Week”, August 7, 2015: Table Mountain’s “Tablecloth”

1 Table Mountain

It’s fascinating being atop Table Mountain, the mountain that dominates beautiful Cape Town in South Africa.  There’s an easy and a hard way to get atop the mesa of that mountain.  The hard way is to walk up — steep grades and a significant verticle gain.  The easy way is to do what we did — take the cable car to the top.

The mountain is a fascinating ecosystem and one of its most amazing features is the layer of cloud that forms on it, known as the “tablecloth” to the locals.  The tablecloth is not static.  Like the fog in San Francisco, it sometimes appears out of nowhere and moves.  The cloud actually advances with remarkable speed and can obscure your views …

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“Pic of the Week”. April 5, 2013. Two Oceans Aquarium, Cape Town, South Africa

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There are two types of places I enjoy visiting in my urban travels — aquariums and libraries.  I love libraries because of their architecture, the thousands of wonderful books, and I find the quality of a library tells me a lot about the values of a city’s citizens and government.  I like to visit aquariums because they’re so much fun!  Where else for a few bucks can you be transported to a different world?  I can easily lose myself for most of a day in a good aquarium.

The finest aquarium I’ve ever visited is the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California; the Two Oceans Aquarium in the V&A waterfront of Cape

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.All Trips / Africa / South Africa

Sojourn in Johannesburg

Sojurn-in-Johannesburg-001

Jo’burg (aka Jozi) is South Africa’s corporate capitol and a megapolis of at least 7 million. Like many enormous cities, there are islands of beauty and grand architecture, but to a large extent this is a dirty and uninspiring travel destination. Of all our stops in Southern Africa, this was my least favorite in part because I’m not a big fan of sprawling mega-cities.

Johannesburg was founded as a gold boom town some 125 years ago and you’ll still find active mines scattered throughout the city. Jo’burg has evolved over the years as a financial and business hub. It is the gateway to Southern Africa as most international flights travel through Jo’burg before taking you to your final destination, including …

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Cape Point: Peninsula, Penguins & Protea

Cape Point —  Peninsula, Penguins & Protea

There are many day trips you can take from Cape Town, one of the of the best being a drive down the Cape Point Peninsula to it’s tip. The day will provide you with beautiful scenery, wonderful beaches, small harbor towns, dramatic cliffs, a lighthouse, ostriches, and brilliantly colorful protea. Perhaps the greatest fun of the day is to visit the colony of African penguins that live on the Peninsula.

From Cape Town there’s a winding road of good quality that hugs the coast and takes you mostly through the wilderness preserve of Table Mountain Nature preserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our first stop was at Hout Bay, a small town …

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Cape Town: Grand Dame of Africa

Cape Town —  Grand Dame of Africa

It’s hard not to love a visit to Cape Town, a grand old city, one of the finest anywhere. It’s the oldest city in Southern African and has been captivating tourist’s hearts for centuries. A blend of old colonial charm and modern amenities, Cape Town has much to offer a visitor. I was very impressed not only at the beauty of the city and its setting but also at its multiculturalism and how, even though only 20 years had passed since Apartheid ended, the country’s racial groups have make great strides at integrating into one culture. This city was our first destination in Southern Africa, after the exhausting 20+ hour flight from New York (and connection in …

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