Cape of Good Hope
We’re winding our way around the tip of South Africa now. Several of our group left in Cape Town and we are down to 5 now. Luckily, we all get on. Alas, I somehow lost the text I wrote around this leg of the journey and have to rely on good old wikipedia.
The Cape of Good Hope is at the southern tip of the Cape Peninsula approximately 50 km (31 mi) south of Cape Town, South Africa.
When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus, the first modern rounding of the cape in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East (although Herodotus mentioned a claim that the Phoenicians had done so far earlier).[2] Dias called the cape Cabo das Tormentas (“Cape of Storms”; Dutch: Stormkaap), which was the original name of the “Cape of Good Hope”.[3]
As one of the great capes of the South Atlantic Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope has long been of special significance to sailors, many of whom refer to it simply as “the Cape“.[4] It is a waypoint on the Cape Route and the clipper route followed by clipper ships to the Far East and Australia, and still followed by several offshore yacht races.
Cape of Good Hope (Please click on any image to enlarge gallery)
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