Going Underground in Cape Town...

As many of you know, last weekend we braved a trip down below Cape Town's city streets as we did a tunnel tour of the old canals.  Not many people know that these canals exist, let alone that you are able to do tours.  But you can and we did and it was brilliant!  Well worth a go if you're older than 7 and young enough to manage a ladder down a man hole...

So, here's our group gathered in the car park of the Cape of Good Hope Castle.  It's where dear old Jan van Riebeek set up home when the Dutch first discovered the Cape, in 1852.  Back then, the sea/beach came right up to the castle on the Strand Street side, hence the name of the road (strand = beach).  Anyway, here we're getting our instructions on the tour... 

And this is Matt, our guide.  Sorry for the poor ...

 Jake and Danie waiting to get going.  Jake was really excited about the trip.  They did luminous face painting on Jake (and me) and gave us all little light sticks...

 Hahaha - I love this little pout.  He was blowing me a kiss...

 Weeds that look so revolting growing in my lawn (I have about a gazillion of these on my pavement, no exaggeration), but look so pretty growing out the castle walls...

 Checking out the man hole and getting our instructions on how to proceed down the hole...

 When it came to going down, Jake was a little nervous.  He did well though and once he was in and going down the ladder, he was happy again.  I think it was just the shift from being on the ground, to finding the first rung on the ladder in the dark and then having to manoeuvre down...

 There's me...

 And yes, there were spiders, but no many and they stayed on the roof, well out of my way...

 This picture shows the division where the new bricks meet the old ones.  The canal became a bit of a dumping ground and so it was closed up years ago (I can't remember how long ago)...

 Um... this is a picture of one of the bigger colonies of cockroaches.  There were a lot of cockroaches and they seriously are my worst bug ever, but you do kind of switch off to them.  They stay on the wall, so it's really not that bad.  And they don't make any funny noises...

 Like little moles winding through the tunnels...

 Here two canals meet.  Some of these canals come from as far as Camp's Bay and Table Mountain.  There's a lot of water below our city!  Actually, Woolies head office in Adderley street has tapped into this water and uses it for it's bathrooms.  The water is perfectly clean and there hasn't been sewerage in the tunnels since 1800 and something...

 Haha - this is Jake's face after he slipped and went for a little swim...

 He was pretty wet, but got over it OK.  Thank goodness it was a lovely day.  They don't do tours if there's any remote threat of rain.  The water runs quite quickly and the tunnels can fill up in a flash...

Looking heavenwards through a man hole...

 this is an older part of the tunnel, running up towards City Hall.  You can see the old bricks (the same as the castle's walls). The roof is also much lower, which meant we had to duck if we didn't want the spiders to touch our hats and potentially fall down our backs...

 Mom and Dad were there too.  Always game for fun, those two...

 And then it was back into the sunshine...

 Jake's boots were full of water and he was drenched...

All in all, it was quite an adventure and such a wonderful experience.  We hope you all get to go some time!!

Sending lots of love,
Sue XXX