The weather in and around Cape Town is a bizarre phenomenon. You can be sitting outside a cafe in the centre of town enjoying a perfect blue sky, yet within a short drive to the other side of Table Mountain and down the peninsula, the weather will have completely changed. This is a problem we encountered a few times during our stay and it lead to two failed attempts to visit Cape Point & the Cape of Good Hope. Finally, however, we prevail and I think it's fair to say it was worth the wait.
The National Park is called the Cape of Good Hope and it is a common misconception that it is the southern tip of Africa. Although it is very far south, that title in fact belongs to a place called Cape Agulhas (about another 90 miles southeast). We didn't go to Cape Agulhas though, we went to the Cape of Good Hope, and for the sake of our journey this is the End of Africa!
The Park is pretty big so you drive around from one spot to the next, taking your photos and videos as you go. The main attractions are Cape Point (south east corner of the peninsula), Cape of Good Hope (south west corner of the peninsula - and in fact Africa), but much more importantly: Dias Beacon! Dias Beacon is a cross erected to mark a dangerous area for sailors, and is to honour the great explorer Richard...err...Bartolomeo Dias. Despite the obvious signifance of this beacon, for some reason we found it deserted. Some people have no sense of importance!
OK so maybe Dias Point isn't really the be-all and end-all - it was cool to find my last name engraved into a tower thing in South Africa. It was also pretty cool to stand out on the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope to make us the most southwestern people on the continent. It kind of reminded me of a Simpsons episode when they're all holding hands but standing in five different states...
At Cape Point, there's a lighthouse you can go up which has a great view of the coastline and that's when you can really appreciate you're at the meeting of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. At the top, there's one of those posts that points to some different cities around the world and tells you how far away they are. We find the one for Rio (our next destination) and it suddenly reminds us our days in Africa are numbered...
