The Blithe Traveler: Cape Agulhas

To be clear, yesterday's entire post was a set up for a single bad pun. Tragic, perhaps, but that's what comes of being the sort of person who had Hope surgically removed for her 40th birthday (1)

The day after Christmas, our "plan," if one can call such a loosely constructed thing an actual plan, was to drive from Cape Town to Swellendam to spend the night at one of the nicer lodges we booked. We netted about 3,000 kilometers (about 1800 miles) on this trip, so I was very conscious during the planning process to think about how much driving we were doing each day, and to balance shorter drives with longer stopping breaks. The original drive for today was meant to be about two and a half hours. But, once we realized that the actual Southern-most point in all of Africa was just an hour each way out of our way, well, off we went.

Cape Agulhas means the "Cape of Needles." It is so called because the sea off Cape Agulhas is notorious for winter storms and mammoth rogue waves, which can range up to 30 metres (100 ft) high. A large number of shipwrecks haunt the area: Arniston (1815), Cooranga (1964), Elise (1879), European (1877) Federal Lakes (1975), Geortyrder (1849), Gouritz (1981), and Gwendola (1968) are just a few of the vessels lost in the proximity of the Cape.

The area was reasonably "crowded," but, as you can see from the photos, that doesn't mean so very much. It's not like the sort of press one finds say at Rockefeller Center during the tree lighting. But, there were other people around. Rather hilariously, I thought, we queued up to snap photos at the Actual Point Marker.

Kind of cool. And then we went climbing out on the rocks a bit, hoping that the 100-foot waves were not in the mood to make an appearance that day. Looks good.

Wait, what's that??

Watch out! Oh, never mind. It's okay.

The weather was spectacular, warm and sunny, and we decided it was time to climb the lighthouse.

There is a small "Museum," but, really, it's about climbing to the top. The information was very clear and upfront: no children under 12 without an adult, the climbing is meant to be difficult, please, ladders only for the last bit, if you are claustrophobic, go home now. The signs lined the way to the first ladder, so they were pretty serious about communicating their message.

Up we went, and it was a fairly vertical climb. We arrived on the last platform before the final ladder to the outside, and were stopped by a wee child and her dad who were coming down slowly, slowly, slowly. The tiny room got progressively more and more congested as more people came up, and we all stood waiting for the tiny girl to work her way down. Her dad was very patient with her (and it was a nice, polite crowd, too, as everyone could see the little girl was really doing her best).

But, oddly enough, the dad turned to me once he was on the ground and said indignantly, "So, why don't they make that easier for the tourists, do you think?" Poor guy was really pretty irrate, although, honestly, unless he was completely illiterate, I didn't much think he had a leg to stand out. "Well, perhaps they have," was what I said, and certainly, they had put up enough signs.

The view from the top was beautiful, and well worth the wait and climb. Oh, wait, that's not the view, that's me and Jeff. Ah, well, so you get us instead of the view. When I'm looking back at this in ten years, I'll be happy enough to see us instead of the view.

In fact, we took our Christmas card photo up here.

Despite the fact that it was the day after Christmas. The is a greatness to my lateness.(2) I did send them out the following night, and assume most arrived before the New Year. Although, if you were a recipient this year, you may have noticed that I dated our trip to Egypt, June, 2014. These are the sorts of things that happen when you wait until past the very last minute to send out your Christmas cards. Mea Culpa.

Next: Swellendam, So Very Pretty

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(1) Technically, the child was born something like seven days short of the specific 40th anniversary of my birth, but there was a c-section and Hope was removed. There you have it: The Mother of All Puns.

(2) A semi-quote from one of my all-time favorite movies: Four Weddings and A Funeral.