Our Blog - South Africa Safari - Day 1

As we flew in, I took a few pictures from the plane. We never really thought about South Africa having mountains, but as you'll see, there are a lot of elevation changes.

We started in Cape Town, which is the oldest city in South Africa. One interesting thing about South Africa is that the "government" is separated into 3 different cities: the Parliament sits in Cape Town, the executive capital where the Presidency is based is Pretoria, and the judicial capital where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located is Bloemfontein.

Things started well, with the driver who we had booked to pick us up at the airport being perfectly on time. After checking in, we headed down to the waterfront to look around. You can see this flat mountain, which is called Table Mountain (more pictures on Day 3). Then some pictures of the waterfront.

Nobel Square pays tribute to 4 Nobel Peace Prize laureates that come from South Africa: the late Nkosi Albert Luthuli, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, former State President FW de Klerk and former President Nelson Mandela.

We started the Safari part a little early with Tom finding this great pink Rhino :-)

The red Clock Tower dates from 1882 and was the first Port Captains office. The clock itself was imported from Edinburg and has lovely Gothic windows.

We had dinner also at the Victoria and Alfred (V&A) Waterfront at a South African restaurant. It was full inside so we sat outside, which gave us a perfect view of a set of local dancers and singers who came by. We grabbed a video to give everyone an idea of the sights and sounds.

We were trying to eat "local", so we started with a couple well-known South African dishes. First was Bobotie, which is a spiced ground beef square that is topped by an egg-based savory custard. Tom started with an Ostrich steak. On the menu, it was listed as "Venison", which is used as a catch-all term for any game meat (they actually don't have deer in South Africa).

You can go back to the main Safari page or continue on to Day 2.