Up, Up and Away

An afternoon meander, following our noses and inclinations, took us for a closer inspection of the One O’clock time ball, built to give ships’ captains an accurate visual of the time so they could adjust their watches. This one now works automatically for historical, educational and entertainment purposes and the warm brick building sits in an elevated position amongst buildings such as the Harbour Engineers Building, an attractive array of historical buildings in modern day alternative uses, some of them looking Cornish in style.

A short walk away is the pale yellow painted New Somerset Hospital, built in 1862 for the use of everyone in need of care and designed using some of Florence Nightingale’s ideas of wide balconies for wheel chairs and beds and big windows to provide the patients with plenty of fresh air and light. The building has gone through phases that reflect early apartheid thinking; some councillors and managers considered mixing the races undesirable and then their successors would disagree and the hospital would be open to all again.

It was a lovely afternoon for a spin on the wheel and at the ticket desk the nice lass also gave us complimentary tickets for the harbour cruise. It was fun seeing the time ball and our twin pubs from above but we didn’t quite make it to the height of Table Mountain; that was reserved for the next day.

The sea looked as beautiful as ever above the Breakwater Hotel with Robben Island in the distance and Rob looks better doesn’t he. I think the fresh air and freedom in Cape Town is doing us both good.

The cruise started from just behind Zoonie as you can see and took us all around the harbour, past the six, tall, sand-coloured silos and the rectangular building behind, with its faceted windows, all part of Silo 1, once a grain silo, now a one hundred gallery art centre, on past the fishing fleet old and new and the tall Harbour Control from which I took those panoramic shots while we were collecting one of our arrival letters. We sped back through the two bridges on the same route as our arrival, enjoying the breeze created by our motion because it was a hot afternoon, well into the thirties. Looking at photos from back home with snow and freezing temperatures, we were enjoying our last hot months in a southern continent summer.