Simon's Town and the Cape Peninsula

The drive to Simon's Town was gorgeous, passing through lovely little harbour towns along the coast, and stopping off at a lovely harbour-front restaurant for a great seafood lunch.

Simon's Town itself is a nice small town but really I wanted to use it as a launch pad for cycling down to the end of the peninsula, through the Table Mountain National Park and along the Cape of Good Hope all the way to Cape Point, the tip of peninsula itself.

After a bit of messing about with the owner and helper of the place we stayed (the Simon's Town Backpackers), it turned out they didn't have the bikes we booked the day before. Not detered, we had to drive back to a previous town to rent bikes, drive back to Simon's Town and the then head off for the day.

It really was a magnificent day's cycle. First stop was to see the 'jackass' penguins (they bray like a donkey - quite funny really), just outside Simon's Town itself. These cute critters have a colony right on the shore, and anybody can just stroll up to them (of course your not supposed to disturb them, but of course we saw a small group of American idiots doing exactly that!).

We moved on, and the road was great with constant views of the ocean. Passing groups of baboons we entered the National Park itself (and I was a bit miffed that they charged us the same entrance fee as a car!), and travelling along the peninsula through beautiful fynbos countryside (local vegetation type) , we finally arrived at Cape Point. This is quite a developed area really and caters of course to all the tour buses and rental cars. It just seemed far more satisfying to have arrived by bike, riding leisurely all along the coast and over the numerous hills and climbs and thereby having earned our right to now soak up the stunning views of the mountains, ocean and coastline. We loitered about here for a good bit - climbing up to the lighthouse (the strength of the wind up there was amazing), and having a nice relaxed lunch, before what seemed was a much easier cycle back to Simon's Town.

We spent another day just strolling around Simon's Town itself, checked out the lovely small harbour, the local museum, which was cute, an old toy shop/museum and the statue of Just Nuisance (a cute story I thought - http://www.simonstown.com/tourism/nuisance/nuisance.htm). Dinner that night was of course in the best restaurant in town, a french place called Bon Appétit.

Next morning was an early enough start to head up into Cape Town proper - a place that everyone we'd met had told us we'd love - and they weren't wrong.