Cape Town is one million billion trillion times better than Durban

Yesterday before we left for Cape Town we checked out the Shark Board tour of the coastline. These dudes change each net every two weeks (if they don't they become a breeding ground for sea-life and will actually end up attracting sharks):

It was fun to listen to a South African woman on the tour ask a bunch of questions ("so wait, there are no nets out right now?! Sharks could swim in?!") and attempt to not sound panicked.

Then we hopped a flight to Cape Town. Soooo excited to be heading out of Durban. Why the hell did no one say "stay the fuck out of Durban"? Okay, we are glad we went so we can say we went, but it makes Cape Town look like Paris. But actually, even without the comparison Cape Town is really nice. It's very cosmopolitan and Bohemian, and most everyone seems pretty happy and the city is gorgeous:

The Gardens in the middle of town were originally vegetable gardens set up to produce supplies for ships passing around Africa. Now they house lots of plants and statues:

We toured the Castle of Good Hope. It's more of a fortress than a castle, complete with moat and torture chamber. It's about 350 years old, and the oldest surviving structure in South Africa: 

(our precious guide, similar to a tiny Richard Sherman  - he was hilarious!)

It's also windy as fuck. Like so windy it actually blew us in to the road - it moved our feet, like black magic!! They also love their food and wine here, so we're fitting in quite nicely: 

The Malay/Muslim Quarter (Bo Kaap) is beautiful! They obviously take a lot of pride in the facades of the buildings here:

(We also found a mosque on Church Street, which made me chuckle.)

Oh yeah, we watched a political rally for the ANC (Mandella's party). It was LOUD and there was a bunch of singing, chanting, and dancing:

But if one is to witness a political rally in Africa we were in about the safest place to do so.

V&A Waterfront is kind of like Scandinavia threw up all over the coastline, but it was very pleasant, and we split a bottle of South African Riesling here:

Posing like a total dumb-ass is our new thing - we've discovered that lots of tourists pose like this but it's NOT a joke:

Tonight we're headed out in our hotel's neighborhood (which is luckily in the heart of everything) to find some delicious grub. Tomorrow is Table Mountain and (hopefully) a penguin siting on the cape!!!