Llandudno Beach, Cape Town

We're definitely out of our element here.  This is a very posh beach community on the Atlantic side of Cape Town.  Table Mountain National Park abuts our neighborhood.  There are stunning views of the coastline.  Off shore, cargo ships bypassing the Suez Canal have been passing constantly since we arrived.  It quite impressive to see this amount of global shipping in action.

Today we visited the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, one of the world's most prominent garden.  It was built on land donated by Cecil Rhodes who bought it so that he wouldn't get any unwanted neighbors beside his farm.

Some of the plants are so rare and valuable to collectors that there have been nighttime heists, a la Ocean's Eleven, resulting in theft.  The most prizes plants are not micro chipped and protected by drones and laser sensors.

Cape Town has long been the most progress city in South Africa, and things are much more integrated here than in some areas.  We listenes to President Ramaphosa's state of the union speech last night while at dinner. It was on in the restaurant, but most people ignored it.  I was impressed with the scope of the stated goals, including such things as carbon capture, but most of the reviews I've read said that it was the same old, same old that the ANC has been saying since 1994.  The country is facing an election this Spring, Northern Hemisphere spring.

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