Cape Town

I’m just finishing up a business trip to Cape Town, so I thought I’d share a few photos of my time there.  It was FCB’s global conference, lasting from Friday to Thursday, with a couple of days/afternoons off, so I didn’t have to spend the entire time in a conference room!  Overall, a really amazingly beautiful city, incredible people/history and certainly in the downtown/tourist regions, a lot safer than popular perception
As you can see from the photos below, the hotel we were staying in was very nice, but what was nicest was the amazing views of Table Mountain, which dominates all of Cape Town.  It really is amazing to be in a city that is so close to such huge mountain

 

This was the view from the hotel patio where we had breakfast every day.  As I said to one of my colleagues, “if you have to work the weekend, this isn’t a bad place to do it”
 

Probably the most exciting thing, was our guided hike up to Table Mountain, myself and Simon White (a planner from the UK living in San Francisco) signed up for the “scramble route” which sounded quiet reasonable, until we realized that it involved multiple “scrambles” and that “scrambles” are 12-20 foot vertical cliff faces, with no ropes, headgear and sheer drops all around!!  While the views were incredible, I was frequently grateful throughout the trip that it wasn’t in any way harder

  
Here’s Simon taking a breather, in the background, you can see a woman emerging from one of our vertical climbs! Exhausting!!

  
Here’s us navigating a narrow path along a sheer cliff, I took this photo, but when I walked this path, I was definitely hugging the wall!!

  
This is the view from the top, I worked up quiet a sweat!!

 
But the view was pretty incredible!

 

Another highlight of the trip was visiting Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was a prisoner for many years.  A very moving experience, especially since our guide had been a prisoner there for over 18 years!

Here’s the view of Cape Town from the boat to Robben Island: 

   
Here’s his cell window from the exercise yard, its the one that is open 

 
And here is his cell (with his mattress on the floor on the right)

 

Finally, we had a chance to drive down to the Cape of Good Hope, a few miles from central Cape Town and more than anything we were impressed by just how beautiful the scenery was:

  
Here’s the view from the top of The Cape of Good Hope:

  

And lots of amazing bays along the way, with clouds falling over the tops of the mountain tops:

  
And plenty of wildlife and vineyards:

  
  
Here’s the vineyard we went for dinner one evening:

  
All in all an amazing trip, that I feel very lucky to have been able to go on!