The Rapture

We're on the verge of going off the grid, and before that happens, I wanted to post a few of our photos from Cape Town.

While John has attended roughly 77 talks on various and sundry physics topics — Cosmic Deceleration Parameter q(Z) Dependence Upon Gravitons, anyone? — I've been touring around Cape Town, hotel-bunny style.

I've spent a fair amount of time at the Waterfront, with which I've developed something of a love-hate relationship.

It's a beautiful area along the water, and the abundance of restaurants and English-language bookstores make us feel like we're experiencing the rapture.

But the whole place definitely has a Fisherman's Wharfy, tourist ghetto feeling to it. It's a lot more interesting to walk the mile or so into downtown, which also has a tourist infrastructure but doesn't feel so much like Cape Town Disneyland.

One redeeming feature of the Waterfront is that it's still a working harbor, so there are all kinds of boats and piers and shipping containers to feed my secret love of all things industrial:

Fur seals are another big highlight for pinniped fans like us:

Cute marine mammals aside, it's hard to say what about Cape Town makes us the happiest: the food, or the weather.

Even on the days when the weather forecast says "cloudy with light rain", there might be an hour of clouds and a form of cloud-based moisture that might be rain if you really used your imagination, followed by an entire day of brilliant sun.

This is in sharp contrast to the Netherlands, where a "10 percent chance of rain" just means that it's going to rain all day.

And the food! In addition to gorging ourselves on sushi, we've also had delicious South African, Ethiopian and Cape Malay cuisine. Just look at how happy and well fed we look!

This morning, I picked up a rental car and drove it by myself, on the left side of the road, back to the hotel. My post-driving trembling notwithstanding, I'm really excited to have a car.

Using our combined powers of observation to survive the totally counterintuitive driving, we're leaving Cape Town tomorrow. First we'll head down the Cape Peninsula to Simon's Town, where we hope to see penguins and baboons in the wild.

Then we'll drive east to De Hoop Nature Reserve for more quality time with the creatures of the sea!