Here we are in Cape Town. Excursioners to Table Mountain will be disappointed. Fortunately, we've been here when it was clear. We had great views back then.
As it's a working port, from the ship there's a short security shuttle to the terminal, from which it's an easy walk to the up-market V&A Waterfront, that features the usual high-end outlets: bags, scarfs, watches, and shoes, in addition to a couple of more modestly priced food and retail stores. This was the first place to extract a significant amount of cash from our fellow travellers.
I soon grew bored and as we have been here before and have been up Table Mountain, been to Stellenbosch, seen the penguins and the botanic gardens, suggested an Uber across town to the previously unseen historic fort (Castle).
The Castle of Good Hope is not a castle, it's a fort. Built by the Dutch East India Company between 1666 and 1679, the Castle is the oldest existing building in South Africa. The purpose of the Dutch settlement in the Cape was to act as a replenishment station for ships passing the treacherous coast around the Cape on long voyages between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Like many well-conceived forts it was never attacked. It became British after they defeated the Dutch elsewhere.
Afternoon Update: It was sunny elsewhere but still cloudy up there on the mountain.
Cranes
As a new graduate I worked for BHP (then a steel company) in Sydney. One of my projects was to log all the high-rise construction cranes to see if that corelated with current demand for structural steel and reinforcing 'd-bar'. It wasn't a very useful indicator for BHP - at least, so I was told. But newly constructed cranes turned out to be an excellent indicator of economic growth. Ever since then, when visiting an unfamiliar city, I have counted the cranes and looked to see if they are actually working. Abandoned or non-working cranes are a good indicator of economic recession.
The Chinese cities we have seen have hundreds of working cranes and, as we would discover, so does Dubai. My total count for all three larger South African cities was 1, in Cape Town. Not a great sign.
Our cruise ended this morning. Missing the ship already.
Off to Dubai in a couple of hours.
There are a lot more images of Cape Town in my article about our, more extensive, 2023 visit. Follow this link: Cape Town