Cape Town -- the end of the Africa trip.

Cape Town. Karen has gone for an after-breakfast walk and I am sitting here writing. We leave for Perth this afternoon. I hope our luggage is OK. I will carry the electrical things rather than putting them into the sea to summit bags and I have couriered my two knives (the Leatherman and a little sheath knife I use to cut fruit and so on) to the hotel in Perth. So hopefully the xray machines won’t show up anything appealing to the bad buggers in the airport.
Cape Town is wonderful. All the horror stories we heard are about events that would take place in any large city.
We went to the funicular railway at the Cape, and boughtt two plastic wrapped sandwiches. I put Karen's on this little stand-up table, right by my hand, inches away, while I unwrapped mine. Suddenly there was a thump and a flash and there was a baboon's bum, three metres away, with Karen's  sandwich. A coouple of minutes later she saw him, a lump of her egg and mayonnaise sandwich in his cheek and the mixture all over his lips. She lectured him, but he didn't seem to care. I re-enacted the scene for the photo in this blog.

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I have talked to a few whites and blacks, and there are still issues – like a whole generation of people who weren’t educated when apartheid was around. They all work hard because they want more for their kids.
We also saw penguins, one of only three land-based gatherings in the world.
The hotel, the Cape Grace, is easily the best hotel I have ever been in. The decor is magic, the people wonderful. It is kind-of old English, yet modern. When we arrived here, they'd heard about my birthday (from A&K, no doubt) and there was a bottle of champagne and a decorated tray of chocolates.
And the picture above shows how they decorate their things for afternoon tea. Very elegant.

Just down to the road from us on the wharf, there's a huge "man" made of normal Coca Cola crates. I have no idea what it's about, but it's sure spectacular.
In the park, the squirrels are so tame they come right up to you, expecting food. One liked Karen so much he climbed her leg.
We also went to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. I took pictures of the island rocks and flowers, and also his cell.
I would come back to South Africa, if we could avoid Johannesberg.