Our trip to Africa last summer brought us to the discovery of two magnificent and exciting realities: Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula in South Africa, and the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
We flew from Rome to Cape Town with South African Airways making a technical and customs stopover in Johannesburg. The absence of time zone and the choice of the month of September to make the tour have facilitated our adaptation in this area of the southern hemisphere.
In Cape Town we have chosen to stay in a hotel located at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the recently renovated marina, which hosts numerous clubs, shops, and above all the Victoria & Alfred Mall, where you can really find everything, from the local craft creations, to the retailers of the tasty South African wines, to the usual shops in the world of clothing and various items.
The atmosphere that you breathe in this port is always festive , it is a purely tourist place where, however, on certain occasions, the local population is also concentrated to celebrate special events. We happened to be in Cape Town on 24/9, a festive day for South Africans celebrating the legacy of the legacy with the famous BRAI, the typically American-style outdoor barbecue.
We start our tour in Cape Town at the Cape Peninsula, first meeting Clifton and then Camps Bay . These are residential areas facing the ocean from which you can see long beaches, all free and unequipped, which, during the summer, are populated by many people. These are beaches frequented out of season by priceless surfers, who challenge the gigantic waves and the presence of sharks of considerable size.
Our first stop is Hout Bay , a small bay from which, weather permitting, a boat leaves to lead in about half an hour to a series of rocks that give rise to a thick colony of Otarie del Capo . On the pier you can admire small stands of street vendors selling local handicrafts with extremely low prices compared to what can be found in the shops in the center.
Moving further away from the west of Cape Town, you can take one of the few existing paid roads in the area, because it requires major maintenance. It is a long way comparable to beauty and fact to our Amalfi Coast, the Chapman’s Peak Drive , in fact you park the cars at street level, but all the structures, residential and hotel, are developed below the road surface and sea front . Pietro Ferrero, the son of the famous Italian chocolate producer at the age of 48 for a heart attack while on a bicycle, is a long way along this marvelous route, in fact a part of this road was dedicated to him.
At the end of this route we reach the Capo di Buona Speranza Nature Reserve which leads us to the most extreme point of the peninsula which coincides with the Cape Point Lighthouse reached by funicular. In the Nature Reserve it is possible to admire ostriches, turtles and numerous baboons . The presence of the latter is so important that at times you can see on the side of the road several men ready to shoot rubber bullets to make these animals unaccustomed to the presence of men as they are lovers of our food and, not infrequently, people if he finds them in his own gardens, he sneaks what is available to eat.
Speaking of the Cape Point lighthouse, it is worth pointing out that two of the two lighthouses have actually reached the end of the lighthouse peninsula . The first, which can not be reached on foot, is the oldest and was abandoned in 1919 because it was built in such a position as not to make its light visible to those coming from the sea, it was positioned too high, so in 1920 it was another one has been built at an altitude of 87 meters that can be admired up close.
The meeting between the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Indian one does not occur off Cape Point, but on Cape Alghuas, a point that can only be seen from Cape Point in the distance.