Mossel Bay
Posted: 2/2/2005 11:15 PM (Permalink)
On the 8th, we left Cape Town and made our way down the coast. We ended up at in the city of Mossel Bay along with legions of tourists. There was a camp trailer park by our hotel that was absolutely packed with campers. The school holidays were still going on.
Mossel Bay has a long maritime history with the Portuguese dating back to 1488 when the explorer Bartholomew Dias dropped anchor there. They have a museum with a replica of the ship.
It’s a real, working floatable ship. It sailed during the 500th anniversary back in the 80s and then they sailed it into the museum here and built the wall behind it.
The hotel that where we were scheduled to stay was not able to accommodate us, so they moved us over to a different hotel (at a discount). It was a lucky break because the new place (The Point) had a fantastic view of the Indian Ocean. I took a panorama shot from our balcony so that you can see my pathetic Photoshop skills.
As is common with many points, this point had a lighthouse. Our hotel is up there on the right.
Below the lighthouse there you can see a cave that was dug out by the tides. There’s an archaeological exhibit in there talking about the people that have lived there over the centuries.
We had a nice dinner and then went to sleep to the sound (wav file) of the Indian Ocean crashing against the rocks outside. (Yes, it’s authentic. I recorded that with my pda from the balcony).