Day 130 – Table mountain and the Killer Dassie
We got our usual breakfast but had to have it half an hour early as we needed to go to the doctor. J noticed that for some reason, the chef is now making her an extra hardboiled egg each day. She started off with 2 but is now up to 4, without asking for it.
We went in to see the doctor together. He prescribed J some cream as although she seemed to be getting better, she’s not 100%. J left S at the same restaurant he stayed at the last time she went to the doctor. She then went and hit the pharmacy. The same pharmacist was working and greeted J warmly with “Back again!”.
S ordered a glass of wine and was surprised to see a cup of coffee delivered to his table. The staff then got into an argument over which one misunderstood his order, but the wine was delivered pretty promptly. We ordered another when J returned from the pharmacy to enjoy the glorious weather. While we were sitting there, J heard chicken and rooster noises. S told her that had to be a person making animal noises. J swore it wasn’t and looked around to spot the chickens. All we did was find a guy who apparently walks around Camps Bay making random animal noises. In addition to the chickens, he does a mean cow, sheep, dog and cat impression. When J requested a hyena impression, he said he’s still working on his wild animal impressions. He’s really impressive. He reminds us of the guy in Police Academy. Sadly J has seen so many chickens walking around Africa that she thought they might also be hanging out in a posh section of Cape Town. S just shook his head.
We then headed to Table mountain and took a cable car up the mountain. The cable car had a rotating floor so that you have had a nearly 360-degree view by the time you get to the top. We walked around and J took a bunch of pictures. The views of the harbour and Robben island were amazing. At one point, she left S sitting on a bench so she could take more pictures. While she was gone, a small, furry rodent-like creature crawled beneath S’ legs. Little kids started running up to see it and S asked what it was. The kids’ father told S it was a ‘dassie’.
When J came back to the bench, S retold the story and J looked up what a ‘dassie’ is and found out it is our old friend from Kenya, the rock hyrax. Apparently they like to hang out around S’ feet. J ran off to try to find it to take a photo, but couldn’t. We decided to go to the café at the top of the mountain, which Justine had recommended. We had a nice bottle of sparkling sauvignon blanc from one of the wineries we are going to visit. We also decided to have a bit of lunch. S had a chicken salad sandwich and J had butter chicken, which was really just chicken curry. There was an ostrich pizza on offer, but we didn’t try it.
We walked around the mountain a little bit more and J was excited to stumble upon a dassie. Unfortunately this one wasn’t especially friendly and bared its tusks at J and the little kids that had gathered around to look at it. One of the little kids commented that this dassie looked angry and backed off. S suggested J do the same. We then learned that the dassies on Table mountain have gotten mean and aggressive. Due to the lights installed on the mountain, they aren’t able to sleep at night and they have been eating cigarette butts so they are strung out on nicotine. Apparently one such dassie bit off a tourist’s nose after she tried to hug it.
When we arrived at the hotel, Justine confirmed that we had a date with a shrimp and crayfish cocktail at 8pm. When we got back to our room, we found that they had set up our deck for lounging without us requesting it. This is definitely 5-star service. S hit the pool and the sunloungers while J relaxed in the room.
