Africa - Final day Simon's Town to Stellenbosch

Well it was bound to happen.  We had planned to get up early to head up the coast exploring along the way to the wine area of Cape Town, Stellenbosch.

The alarm went off at 7am and  I headed for the shower before dawn had broken.  When I got out of the shower, it was still dark... and lightening and rain was happening in a BIG way!  If only it had been 10 minutes earlier I would have stayed in bed!   So, since the weather system had arrived 24 hours earlier, we had a slow morning and then said goodbye to Simon's town.

One of the places I had wanted to photograph was the beach cabanas/ houses along the waterfront in Muizenburg and St James.  These were best done early in the morning, preferably on a sunny day.  Well, we stopped at a bird wildlife refuge for Tom... and he had to battle with the high winds and rain to get 10 new birds in about an hour and a half.  He could have spent all day, but we had other places to be.. like on the beach for more beach houses!  At the two locations where there are still the beach houses, it was cloudy and rainy at both.  And, they weren't quite as impressive up close.

Luckily I was able to get some shots off in-between rain squalls but there wasn't any 

sunshine to be had.

We continued up the False Bay Coastline cutting north to Stellenbosch, one of the wine areas just 30 minutes out side of Cape Town. We stopped for a nice lunch at one of the areas wineries and spotted this castle looking house on the mist covered hill.

Unfortunately, all is not castles on the hills as we did pass through some of the shanty town areas located just outside of town.  This area, in particular, received enough rain in the one day to cause significant flooding, and the wind blew several roofs off of some of the shacks.

The dots are raindrops on the windows.  We had at least 3 occasions where the rain was coming down so hard we had to pull over and wait for it to decrease.  At one intersection, we watched the level rain in the gutters increase as the rain poured down, then slowly recede as it abated!

Our next morning had us heading to the airport for our flight to Doha in Qatar.

We have cruising friends there, Carol and Livia, whom we haven't seen for 7 years.  It was fun looking at all the destinations on the board.  Ours was the 4th one listed. We watched one more incredible squall pass by, then the sky got sunny just before we boarded the 10 hour flight.

Africa has been an amazing place.  We're sad to be leaving it, but the rest of the trip is waiting for us.