Doing it again
There is always a
desire to do something different when we are in Cape Town, though there are
things we cannot tire of doing and repeating out of the beauty of the
experience and how the passage of time allows us to see things anew.
The walks to the Victoria &
Alfred Waterfront, sitting at Nobel Square where now all the four Nobel Peace Prize laureates from South Africa whose statues stand
there have passed on, the last two within months of each other.
Funny funicular fudge
Other popular places
we have visited many times and today we decided to return to Cape Point and
take that 45-minute walk from Cape
Point to Cape of
Good Hope. On arriving at Cape Point, we thought we would have enough time
to visit the lighthouse before going on the trek, but with the time we queued for
tickets to the funicular ride up and the waiting to board, there wasn’t enough
time before returning to the rendezvous point for the trek.
One thing we noticed
about the funicular situation suggests there might be some nefarious activity
involved in the ticketing process that probably should be investigated, then we
are not accusing anyone of anything, yet it did not escape our cursory
observation. I paid for two adult return tickets, and I was given two separate proofs
of payment and two return tickets with barcodes.
I gave one ticket to Brian,
and we presented our tickets at the turnstile, mine was read and I walked
through, but Brian’s did not let him through that the staff used a ticket from
the next person to let him through. I suppose our apparent discomfiture made
the staff improvise and we thought nothing of it.
A collusion in
practice
At the top, we only
had time to use the gents, take a few pictures and return on the funicular
where this time, Brian was able to walk through the turnstile, but my ticket
was refused as having already been used. The staff there did not do much to
check my ticket, he simply led me to the passthrough gate by unlinking the
chain.
It was then that we
compared tickets and found that the reference codes and barcodes were the same
when they should have been different. It would appear I was genuinely charged
for 2 adults, but the ticket was duplicated for just one. For this to work if
there is no proper reconciliation between tickets issued and moneys collected, the
funicular staff have to collude in a fraudulent enterprise. I have my
doubts that paying for two adults would have produced two identical codes
rather than unique ones.
The fact that it was
overlooked at the departure gate and the return gate of the funicular service
would suggest something fishy, but who knows? An error of sorts in the system?
I cannot say for sure; I just have an eye for interesting irregularities, and
this was one of them.
Like a different tour
We arrived in time
for the trek, it was exciting as it was at times also terrifying, but we did it
along with seeing such breath-taking views at the edges of continental
Africa. The tour had changed from a first stop at Bloubergstrand with
picture-postcard views of the Table Mountain to Kalk Bay, the tour guide was
a chatterbox raconteur who seemed to retell the tall tour tales we had heard
before with more relish and insight, we were caught between amazement and
rolling our eyes, most of the time.
As the restaurant at
Cape Point had closed, we made for Seaforth not far from Simonstown where we had a
late launch and as we had seen quite a few penguins in bigger colonies,
Boulders Penguin Colony presented no particular interest to us. Water’s Edge
Beach and Boulders Beach
were teeming with crowds that we hardly noticed on our last visit.
We even got to see
wild eland and ostriches at the Table
Mountain National Park, we could not have said it was the same tour of
April 2019. As we returned through Simonstown to Cape Town.
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