Today we have to get an early start as we are going on a Table Mountain excursion. We meet at 7:30 in Insignia Lounge and about ten minutes later are sent out. We pass through the Cruise Terminal and hop on a very nice bus. There are only fourteen of us tourists, plus Peter Croyle and Elizabeth, our guide.
Cape Town traffic is heavy this time of day, of course, and it takes a while to
Steve and Cathy's Blog
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Well, we have had another great high altitude adventure here in Cape Town, but as we write this, we are within a hour of leaving the Radisson Blu Hotel here and boarding the Rovos Rail train that we will be on for three days.
The picture at the beginning of this post is our ship Insignia sailing out of Cape Town without us. It was taken from our hotel room. It was a very strange feeling
At 1:00pm today, we are to arrive in Cape Town, South Africa, the most European of South Africa’s cities that lies at the southern tip of the continent. We will spend two nights and three days here before beginning a Rovos Rail journey for the next four days. This is also the terminus for approximately 300 of the passengers, with a similar number, we assume, boarding here. Steve takes the morning to catch up on the
On Sea Days, as we have said before, we are establishing a routine. And in our case, the routine holds our interest but is not jam-packed. It probably is just as well that we are not on a larger ship as many of the activities available on such vessels would not see us in attendance, even though we would be paying for them. So here on Insignia, we do not feel we are losing out if
Our excursion today has the intriguing title Moon Landscape and Welwitschia. We meet in Insignia Lounge at 9:30 and are assigned Bus 24. We were trying to be on the same bus as our friend Paula, but she ended up the last one for Bus 23 and we were the first for Bus 24. We have to work on coordinating better with our friends of we want to hang together on a tour.
Our bus isn’t
We sail into the protected and important harbor of Walvis Bay right on time around 8:00am to begin a 32-hour stay, the first port of call where we actually get to go ashore for two days. Even without docking, we can see that this is going to be different than the three previous West African ports. There are several huge dry docks, some with small ships in them being repaired, a large car carrier ship, and
What a difference a day makes, as the song goes. As predicted by Peter Croyle in his lecture, there has been a considerable and very welcome change in the climate. The air temperature when we wake up is in the 60s, and the heavy humidity is gone. We had started to notice the change as we attended the Country Fair yesterday (a photo of the Housekeeping booth with the put-the-pillowcase-on-the-pillow contest that is at the beginning
Last night, we moved the clocks forward again. We are now seven hours ahead of home … I think. We decide to have breakfast in the Grand Dining Room. I think we’re hungry, and since we aren’t booked on an excursion, we have plenty of time. Steve indulges in waffles, Cathy has two eggs over easy and potatoes. The range of foods available is staggering. We could even have a steak or lamb chops for breakfast
This is the first of three straight Sea Days needed to get us from Sao Tome to Walvis Bay, Namibia. We are heading practically due south, and the fact that it will take three days to reach our next destination is beginning to give us an idea of how large the planet is. I confess that these multiple Sea Days are all starting to run together in my mind. Not that there isn’t anything to do,
The first question that comes to mind for most people is “Where the heck is Sao Tome?” We certainly had to look it up when we looked at the cruise itinerary. The country is actually named Sao Tome and Principe and is made up of the two islands by those names. Sao Tome is by far the largest, and is located 1 mile north of the equator and 190 miles west of Gabon. Sao Tome is
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Husband and wife from Wallingford, Connecticut USA
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