Cape Town

We made the successfully journey from Durban to Cape Town. We are having a very nice weekend in Cape Town. The city is absolutely gorgeous and we’ve had a pretty relaxed schedule thus far. There is a great waterfront area not too far from the hotel and we’ve spent a lot of time there. We were not able to go to Robben Island because the weather was too bad and we were not able to take the cable trolley up Table Mountain because it is under maintenance. However, we have found other activities to fill in the time.

Yesterday we went to Long Street and shopped at a flea market. In the evening we took a drive up the coast and ate at Hout Bay. Today we drove up the coast again, over the mountain and visited a winery. We start back again with meetings at Parliament on Monday.

You can definitely see the end of the trip coming. We were talking about the long day ahead on Tuesday/Wednesday. That is the day we are traveling back to the States. I’m wishing we had a couple more days in South Africa. I would have really liked one more day in Durban and probably one more in Cape Town. But I can’t complain, it has been a great trip so far.

I do have to say that getting Internet access is harder in South Africa than I thought and it is much more expensive than most places. This is due to the isolation of South Africa, ie it is not on the way to anywhere as far as the Internet is concerned. However, I have heard that they are in the process of laying some new fiber optic cable to South Africa and they will be much more connected in the future. That doesn't help me much.