Cape Town May 28th

Thursday May 28, 2026

Our second day in Cape Town was spent riding the cable car to the top of Table Mountain and then touring the wine country outside the city. The day was very overcast and cloudy with a fog/cloud bank surrounding the mountain. Not the best day for sightseeing from a mountaintop! The weather forecast for tomorrow was for clear skies, which would make for perfect viewing. However, after discussing our options with Manseur we decided to keep our original schedule and visit the mountain today. Tomorrow we’ll be driving the Cape Peninsula route, which winds along the coast all the way to The Cape of Good Hope.

When we got to the cable car we were surprised to see as many people as we did waiting for the next car. I thought we would have the entire mountaintop to ourselves. We couldn’t see a thing out the cable car windows as we rode to the top and the view at the top was as we had imagined…a blanket of fog everywhere. However, there’s a nice, paved trail around the top of the mountain that Rich and I enjoyed walking.

Afterward we toured Cape Town’s wine country and enjoyed a cheese and wine tasting at one vineyard and a chocolate and wine tasting at a second. (Rich had juice and cheese/chocolate, although he didn't seem overly impressed with the juice.) We also visited the bustling university town of Stellenbosch and the quieter, more refined Franschhoek, both charming.  

By the time we returned to Cape Town in the late afternoon, the clouds had cleared away and we took a walk on the ocean promenade and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

Waiting for our cable car

And here it is....

If it's this foggy on the way up, what's it going
to be like at the top?

I don't think you're going to
see anything, Rich

The animal on top of the rocks is
a Dassie. Although it looks like a
large guinea pig, it's actually related
to the elephant and manatee

Mad Max cycle outside one of the wineries we
visited

This statue of Nelson Mandela sits outside one of 
the prisons where he was incarcerated for speaking
out against apartheid

Rich's chocolate and juice pairing

Sunset over the Atlantic