A slow start this morning and then a cable car to the top of the mountain, a tour of the military museum, and a trip to the local market to bargain with the vendors (good fun).
Some more information which we have gleaned from the excellent guides:
Cape Town has a population of about 4 mill people.
The best fish in the world is King Klip, caught only in South Africa -it is a thick, white, relatively dense, delicious meal.
Seafood here is excellent, particularly oysters and prawns. Food is too good for our own good!
The gestation period for an elephant is 22 months, with labour lasting only one minute (take note female humans!!). The delivery is with the mother standing and the relatively large baby falls to the ground. Mother eats the afterbirth which serves two purposes - to remove any odour which might attract marauding attackers, and to promote lactation. Poachers usually use poisonous darts to kill elephants - they kill because a large part of the tusk is unseen from the outside, and the extra weight from inside the skull makes the tusks more valuable on the black market for smuggled banned animal products.
Cheetahs are the only ones of the big cats which cannot climb trees - their claws do not retract. This non-retraction allows them to be the fastest animal, being able to streak to 70 km per hour in less than 4 seconds.
The only one of the "big five" which we have not yet seen is a rhinoceros. Hopefully we will see them at one of the next two game parks.
Ostriches are farmed for meat, skins, and feathers. They are sent to an abattoir at age 14 months. The eggs are examined in an incubator, and if infertile are used for human consumption. One egg will feed 18 people, and is the equivalent of about 20 hens' eggs. The ostrich meat is delicious - red meat, no fat or gristle, low in cholesterol, fine texture, and tastes much like a slightly "gamely" version of eye fillet steak.
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