We met Georgie for the last time for some more shopping in Long Street. Like any shopping excursion, we decided this one would be more successful on a full stomach. We stopped for breakfast in Green Square, looking on to nthe market which sells the same mass produced goods you find at every market in South Africa. I chose french toast with fried banana, which was delicious and cheap. Dan had eggs benny with a side of really good haloumi – it came grilled in small cubes. The coffee was pretty good too.

Fed and watered, we wandered along the shopping mecca of Long Street. Our first stop was a hipster take on souvenir shopping with some great t-shirts, posters and small items – we vowed to return to complete our souvenir/ Christmas shopping. Our families should expect to receive African artefacts small enough to go in our suitcases as Christmas gifts by the way. After looking in a couple of homewares shops which included zebra rugs and other clichéd homewares you would expect, we came across a designer pottery and furniture store with some interesting 60s retro furniture downstairs and quite cool porcelain items. Georgie decided to score a porcelain statue of Pinocchio. We kept wandering along what was a row of turn of the century wooden buildings with accommodation above and where the verandas that covered the footpath and provided an outdoor terrace were mostly still intact. From that perspective, Cape Town has a British colonial feel about it. When we reached the heavily decorated Mama Africa, home of an infamous African (read all types of game) restaurant. By now it was clear we had hit the backpacker end of town. Not only had we seen heaps of bars advertising cheap drinks and shots but the souvenirs had morphed much more into the kind of stuff you will see your average late teen or 20 something buy and wear on the rest of their trip around the world – rainbow bikinis and hilarious (at least when you buy them) t-shirts. We decided we’d had enough shopping and headed to the Company Gardens.

The Gardens were established by the East India Company and were surrounded by stone and whitewashed colonial buildings. The gardens themselves were a peaceful oasis in the middle of the city, planted with the type of plants you’d expect from an 18^th century garden in what to the Dutch (and British) would be considered the tropics – palms featured heavily. It was also a haven for squirrels. It reminded me quite a lot of gardens in the other great colonial trading post we had visited – Singapore. We sat and chilled for a little while. We bade Georgie farewell as she went back to her apartment to pack and fly home. After a bit more chilling, we headed to the red tour bus kiosk and purchased a two-day ticket for the bus and a pass for the Table Mountain cable car. We decided to head back to our hotel to chill for a while before jumping on the red loop of the red bus tour at the convention centre. ((White man) in Hammersmith Palais – The Clash – one of the almighty Joe Strummer’s best – raga and social commentary in the one tune – I only got to see Joe perform once – with the Mescaleros (although they played quite a few Clash tunes). It remains one of my all-time musical highlights.)

We headed up Long Street and then up to our late-night mecca, Bree St, to walk around the Bo Kaap, Cape Town’s original Cape Malay district. Over the years residents here, particularly in the streets closest to the city have painted their stone terraced cottages in the brightest shades of pink, green, blue and yellow. It is a spectacular sight and well worth the trek up the hill. We walked a little further up the hill to get a view over the city and I was clear that while there was some gentrification occurring on the city’s edge, where many of the terraces had become restaurants and other businesses, further up the hill this was a poorer area of Cape Town. It also felt a little like we were interfering in people’s daily lives walking through the area, snapping away – even more so than the penguin path at Boulders. As we wandered back down the hill, we stopped at a Cape Malay grocery store to pick up some supplies for the red bus trip – water and some chips and the Cape Malay guy who clearly owned the jam packed ramshackle store (like any Asian or Indian grocer anywhere in the world) talked us into buying a local pastry – koeksistas – that was much like a donut and is traditionally eaten at the weekend. They were OK but I suspect the ones we were sold were actually made a couple of days before.

We made our way back to the bus stop and jumped on board for a tour up past the entrance to Table Mountain and around the beach suburbs of Cape Town where the white sandy beaches and blue clear Atlantic ocean draws the rich and famous to its cliff face abodes – from sprawling mansions on the hillside served by mini funiculars to the apartment blocks carved into the lower cliffs with their top two stories and rooftops dedicated to parking and everywhere you looked gravity defying swimming pools.. Apartments here go for upwards of $5 million so I wouldn’t even like to imagine the cost of a standalone dwelling. It reminds me a lot of some of the beachside enclaves of inner Sydney where real estate and views are at a premium and old houses and apartments are being knocked down to create two and three story properties with a wall of glass. With the exception of two tiny 1900s cottages that were pointed out to us as being heritage listed. Despite that as we headed around the shore through Camps Bay and Sea Point to the waterfront, it was clear development here was a constant with cranes overlooking the beaches on the drive. The most amazing part is that while the beaches are beautiful to look at – Camps bay with its white sand and deck chairs, the wind from the mountain blows the sand across the beach and the Atlantic currents mean the water is at its coldest in summer and never really gets above 12-14 degrees at its hottest. Apparently, there is a rivalry about beaches between Cape Town, where they are more picturesque and Durban, on the Indian Ocean, where you can swim in them. I’ll go with Durban any day. And despite similar prices on Sydney’s beaches, it is fair to say Australia has the best of both worlds.

One of the other interesting sights from this side of Table Mountain was the mountain itself. Belying its name, on the Camps Bay side, Table Mountain looks like anything but a table – several peaks (about 14 in total) dot the horizon, all joined to some degree but also the reason for the wind gusts that are common on this side.

Eventually the bus made its way to the waterfront where we alighted to grab some supplies for the sunset bus tour. But first I had to visit the Oyster Bar, where I enjoyed six medium sized oysters, natural. They were exquisite. After that we set about procuring some cheese, cured meats and olives for a sunset picnic when the bus tour stopped. Fortuitously the provedore in the hipster food barn supplied cheese packs with a couple of types of cheese and crackers (and a knife) for that purpose. We supplemented the pack with a selection of cured meats comprising prosciutto, parma ham and salami, a very tasty unpasteurised cheese (something it is impossible to get at home), and some green olives. I bought a ginger beer and Dan grabbed a beer. The sunset bus is a no stop bus that leaves the waterfront and takes you to the top of Signal Hill to watch the sun set over Camps Bay and the Indian Ocean. We sat on the hill and opened up all our goodies to enjoy a picnic and the spectacular sunset. There were only two drawbacks – the inconsiderate guy who insisted on standing up the whole time blocking the view of those sitting on the hill to enjoy the spectacle and the bush chicken who just wouldn’t stay away from our food. (Safety Dance – men Without Hats – One of the one hit wonder tracks I really liked in the early 80s, somewhere between my fixation with new wave and my discovery of ska.)

After a pleasant evening (and a bit of a wait to get out of the carpark, the bus returned us to the waterfront (via the Camps Bay route) and by now exhausted we caught a taxi back to the hotel.