The past three days in Cape Town have been reasonably busy. Tuesday and Wednesday we spent with Francois. We decided long ago that it was worth our while to make use of his guiding services as with only a short time in town we would have trouble seeing much by ourselves.

Tuesday we spent the morning visiting Robben Island (Seal Island in Afrikaans) where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. It is pretty much what we expected, not spectacular only a lot of concrete buildings, the limestone quarry where prisoners worked 9 hours a day, but an important monument to modern South Africans and a place one has to see.

The afternoon saw us catching the cable car up to the famous Table Mountain. It was cold and misty on the top so we did not stay for an extended period but long enough to get some good views (though brief) of the city from the mountain. Already by this point in our stay in Cape Town we had developed the impression that this is a very scenic modern city.

Wednesday started with a little treat from Francois. He had heard the story from Nina about the Rhino we almost or sort-of saw in Zambia, so before we got under way on Wednesday he took us to a local park where there was a very imaginative sculpture of a Rhinoceros. As you can see in the accompanying photo, this sculpture is the silhouette of a rhino made from metal. But the silhouette is in pieces and the pieces only line up correctly when viewed from precisely the correct angle.

After the Rhino visit we drove south to what the locals call Cape Point and what we learned at school to call The Cape of Good Hope. We were disappointed to learn that this is NOT the most southerly point on the African continent that distinction belongs to another peninsula farther east called Cape Agulhas (means the needles in Portuguese). Not to be deterred by this geographical fact, signs at the cape declare the Cape of Good Hope to be the most South Westerly Point in Africa. On the return from the cape we stopped at a small colony of South African Penguins and with a few thousand other tourists enjoyed watching the antics of these delightful creatures.

Thursday we organized yet-another-animal-safari. As you might recall Nina was more than a little disappointed with the very brief glimpse we got of a Rhino while at the Elephant Camp. So when she found out that Rhinos could be seen at a "near by" game reserve we had to book that tour. So at 6:30 Thursday morning we were picked up by a mini-bus for the 2.5 hour drive north to Inverdoorn. The drive north out of Cape Town was really quite pretty in places and spectacular in others. Though a seat in a min-van is not the ideal way to see the scenery.

At the reserve we, and our 8 travel companions for the day, pilled into a safari vehicle and off we went to find the various animals that the group was interested in seeing. We saw the reserves 3 lions, 2 elephants, 3 rhinos and many springbok and oryx. But surely the treat of the day was the fact that at the reserves base and accommodation area there were two young rhino that had not yet been released into the wider reserve but were being kept in a large yard. We were allowed to visit these two and get up close enough to touch them.

Nina was content, she had seen and photographed a Rhino. We had photos of the Big Five.

The drive back to Cape Town through the wine district and the surrounding mountains was again a combination of pretty and spectacular. But by this time in the day many in the bus were asleep.