I happened to wake up early and saw the market traders setting-up stall at about 6am – these guys work tirelessly from 6am to 6pm, setting up and taking down the stall each day – it was quite a sight to see. We got up and had the buffet breakfast, pretty good but not really the best we’d had during the trip, we weren’t as impressed by the Holiday Inn as we’d hoped – especially for the price. We’d booked the Holiday Inn for a little bit of luxury and comfort (i.e. not just a B&B) but ended up being disappointed – I guess the South Africans know a lot more about hospitality than the Americans.
 After breakfast we began our whirlwind military-planned mission around Cape Town, stopping first to change up some money in the Tourist Information office. Armed with money we went back to Edgar’s to buy a couple of items of clothing (not too much due to space constraints) and then on to Shoprite to look for South African hot sauces which we couldn’t find. The next item on the agenda was to storm Greenmarket Square in search of gifts, we had a great time wandering around the market, it is a pity we didn’t have more time. In contrast to what the guidebooks had told us these guys on the market love to barter and you could pick up some real bargains if you work for it, one stallholder just kept on dropping and dropping his prices, unfortunately it was for a mask about the same size as my rucksack so I couldn’t really have got it home. I went back to the room to drop off the purchases we’d made as they were starting to slow us down, after another spell on the market we went back to the hotel to check out, and left our bags with the concierge. By this time we’d run out of money again so we cashed a few more cheques at Tourist Info and went back to the market for James to buy some more gifts.
The one shop we had left to go into was the Hemp shop, selling a variety of souvenirs where we bought wire key-rings in the shape of chillies, the obvious hemp-marijuana connection was made as we left the store and were offered some dagga (the local term for weed). We returned to Global Car Hire where they had nothing new for us so we agreed that we would pay for the damage on the lowest quote via James’ credit card as long as they would inform us before they took the money.
We still had quite a while left before we had to leave Cape Town and were at that awkward stage in any trip where you know you’re leaving but you can’t really do much more so it all comes down to waiting around, we did the only sensible thing we could and headed straight for a bar. The bar we found was just off the back of Greenmarket Square and sat on the balcony looking over the hustle and bustle of Long Street. We were served by a girl no older than ten who seemed to be the daughter of one of the waitress, we were quite amused by this and gave her the nickname of ‘mini-waitron’ (waitron is the asexual term for waiter/waitress in South Africa). We had a few beers and listened-in to the conversation on the next table, a few American sociology lecturers and some students. The amusing part was that it was so obvious the students were trying to impress the lecturers, they all got quite tied-up in mindless sociological banter – in the end we had to leave.
After on last quick trip to the market to buy some African Hot Sauce (later noticed in both Tesco and Sainsbury’s back home) we collected our bags from the hotel and were offered a cab to the airport by the concierge at a pretty good price, handy as we were keen to miss the greasy cabbie from the previous day who was still due to turn up. The facilities at Cape Town airport are sparse and we managed to get the ubiquitous toastie and a coffee for lunch and have a wander around the wine shop and the duty-free. I used both my own and James’ duty-free allowance to bring back a couple of bottles of Cape Velvet, Van der Hum (tangerine liqueur) and some Kaluha; I also bought myself a souvenir tie with the big-five animals on it, a little something to remember the trip by. After a little more waiting around we boarded the plane and off we flew, a sad moment as it was the end of a thoroughly amazing trip.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Cape Town, market, South Africa, Travel
We got up and started packing ready for the off, by this time we’d accumulated quite an amount of souvenirs, gifts and other non-essentials which needed to be squeezed into our baggage. For the first time since leaving Cape Town I managed to fit my own shoes into my own rucksack, until now poor old James had been carrying them but I decided it was time to start using my own hand-luggage bag. We left at about midday for Johannesburg International Airport, Bill drove us there telling us stories of the different areas we passed though on the journey (approx. 1hr). After check-in we had lunch at Juicy Lucy, selling toasties and fresh fruit juices – I had strawberry, the best fresh juice I’ve ever tasted and from an airport of all places! We didn’t have long to wait until boarding – just enough time for lunch and to buy some newspapers in the kiosk. We flew British Airways for this internal leg of the journey and we had quite a bit more legroom than on the KLM planes but this was a short-haul flight so the comparison may not be totally fair.
We arrived at Cape Town Airport at roughly 16:30 and jumped in a taxi, the car was a dilapidated old Mercedes driven by the greasiest cabbie I think I’ve ever seen. He was friendly enough though and offered to drive us back to the airport on the following morning which I accepted to save us having to bother the next day, we arranged a time then paid him. When we arrived at the hotel (the Holiday Inn, Greenmarket Square) James told me he didn’t feel safe with the driver and there were no seatbelts in the back so we decided to abandon the driver and get a cab from the rank on the next day. We checked-in and dropped the bags off in the room which had unmade beds and hadn’t been cleaned, we mentioned this to the receptionist on the way out.
We went to Global Car Hire to try and sort out the mess and perform damage limitation if we could, but the woman there behind the counter was a tough one to deal with and it ended up half-discussion and half-argument. They showed us a quote for the repairs at R1600 (£100) which seemed a bit steep so we made sure she was going to get more quotes, it’s always hard to know who to trust in these instances but as everything is cheaper in South Africa anyway (not just because of the exchange rate) this would be the equivalent of a much larger quote back home. We left having achieved little and got the feeling that either way they would end up winning as the damage was not specifically written down on the check-out form, this officious attitude was in stark contrast to their previous attitude of “as long as comes back with six wheels and five doors it’s fine” (this is the moral of the story). We arranged to come back the next day to see another quote and finalise things then returned to the hotel, showered and went to Computeria (the Internet café).
For the evening we went to Kennedy’s Cigar Bar; we had drinks in the bar and were looked-after by the waitress that James had met whilst I had been at the wedding, she kept making sure that we had drinks and then took us upstairs when we decided to eat. The bar area downstairs is decorated with enormous photographs of famous cigar smokers (pride of place being reserved for JFK himself) and framed covers of Cigar magazine, the restaurant area is decorated with a touch of class and gives the impression of an exclusive gentleman’s club with smoking lounge adjacent to the dining area. The food was good though not the best we’d had throughout the whole trip and the service was reasonable, we couldn’t find anyone to give us the bill so we transferred everything to our bar-tab downstairs so that at the end of the night the waitress got our tips and not the restaurant guys. We sat drinking cocktails in the downstairs lounge until we could drink no more, a cigar seller kept offering us a wide selection of cigars but we both declined.
Back at the hotel we made a list of the things we had to do the following day and the most efficient order we could do them in, this took a while as we had lots of things to do, little time to do them in and we were drunk.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Cape Town, Cigar Bar, Kennedys, South Africa, Travel
We got-up reasonably early and packed like crazy ready to leave Cape Town then wandered down to Tourist Information to cash some travellers cheques and headed to Global Car Hire. Whilst James dealt with the car I went down to Shoprite and went a bit mad on bottled water, crisps, chocolate and sweets – provisions for the journey should we get stranded. Unfortunately the car we were meant to have had come back with a broken windscreen so we had to wait for another to be returned in a few hours time, we used this time productively and headed for a bar! On the way to The Purple Turtle we stopped-by the Holiday Inn in Greenmarket Square to book a room for our last night in Cape Town before we fly home.
On arrival at The Purple Turtle we decided to play some pool and met two rather strange people. One guy was your regular common-or-garden variety of weirdo – staring at us and gibbering to himself, I think he was European but not British (not that that’s a reason). The other person was British and of undetermined gender (James thought it was an effeminate guy, I thought it was a butch girl) and was thereafter referred to as ‘The Monkey’ – an alarmingly appropriate moniker. After the pool we sat down and finished our drinks watching MTV’s top 10 cameos, we never did work out if the two weird guys actually knew each other.
We headed back to Global and hung around a bit – the car (a Toyota Corolla) was being cleaned and we filled in the paperwork and chatted to the car people. The car was already damaged, it had some kind of impact on the left side (as you look at the car), but structurally it seemed fine. James noticed a few extra bumps and abrasions which the guy wrote down but the all the main guy Shane kept saying to us was “as long as comes back with six wheels and five doors it’s fine” (there’s a moral here). We left the place with an empty tank, so we filled-up at the Shell garage at the bottom of Long Street and headed off towards the Cape.
 On the way down to Cape Point we tried to get the radio in the car working & it seemed reasonably OK, we came across countless Motown stations – these guys LOVE their soul music. When we got down to the Cape National Park we saw an antelope-type-animal from the car – the first real wildlife we had seen so far. In the car park for Cape Point there were Baboons, climbing on cars and running around, we walked up to the Cape Point lighthouse and took some photos of where the two oceans meet. As it turns out Cape Point is neither the place where the oceans meet nor the most southerly tip of Africa – nonetheless it’s still a spectacular view.
After the lighthouse we got lunch from the little takeaway kiosk and sat down on a wall to eat – a big mistake. We were rather stealthily approached by a baboon which was hissing & bearing its teeth at us, it then proceeded to run up to me across the wall (within two feet) and steal my ice-cream. I was bloody terrified, you can get rabies from Baboons if you’re bitten. After finishing what remained of my lunch we left and headed for Boulders Beach.
 On arrival at Boulders we got out of the car, walked down and took a left – here we saw a lovely beach with huge boulders and one single penguin. We went over to look at the penguin and took a few photos thinking (if only briefly) that this was it – we’d come to Boulders Beach on a quiet day. We decided to explore the other direction too and steadily saw more and more penguins until we finally got to the REAL Boulders Beach where there were well over fifty penguins!
We headed away from Boulders through the Cape Flats, a desolate but not unattractive stretch of land just off the coast, the townships inland from here give Cape Town it’s place as the murder capital of the world. We stopped for a quick break in a small agricultural town called Caledon, the people seemed friendly here but we were a little wary since this was our first venture out of the big city. We arrived in Swellendam (another agricultural town) at about 20:30 and searched around for a B&B. In the end we chose the Swellengrebel Hotel, dumped our things and went into the town.
We ate in a restaurant called One Baker Street, apparently named after the original street name when the town was first settled by a Malay gentleman. The food was good and the atmosphere was that of a small cosy diner, one thing we noticed was that the restaurant was basically full of locals, tourism was not so obvious in these parts. After dinner we wandered through the town and ended up at a pub called The Goose and The Bear where I got to try Cape Velvet, a local liqueur not entirely dissimilar to Bailey’s. On the way back to the room through the hotel area they were playing ‘Where do you go to my Lovely’ by Peter Sarstedt – a little piece of home all the way out in South Africa.
As Swellendam was a dark town we took this opportunity to do a bit of stargazing and put into practice the things we had learned in the Cape Town Planetarium. I managed to find south fairly easily – providing a little help should we get lost in the wilderness somewhere, the most bizarre thing (though it should have been expected) was to see the constellation of Orion upside-down in the sky.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Baboon, Boulders Beach, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town, Monkey, Penguin, Sea, South Africa, Travel
We had a lie-in and got up at about 10am, wandered down to Kloof Street and had lunch in Dros (had drinks there on the previous day). I stuck to my staple diet of Cheese & Tomato pizza while James tried the much more exotic Bacon & Banana! On odd and seemingly unexplainable phenomenon was that the urinals in the Gents WC were full of ice, neither of us had seen this before or had any idea why they might do such a thing.
After lunch we headed to the South African National Gallery which we explored for almost two hours. The most remarkable exhibit was a collection of photographs telling the stories of different people from all over the world who had to live with HIV/AIDS. The collection included some very disturbing stories and photographs and tried to demonstrate both the global scale of AIDS whilst also looking more closely at Southern Africa. There were some people wandering around the gallery who were from a charity which was associated with the exhibit, they asked for donations – James gave a little money but I didn’t. I guess my primary reason for not giving money was trust (i.e. lack of), I’m pretty sure the volunteers were on the level but in South Africa a lot of people ask you for money and you become pretty jaded.
 After the gallery we went back to the hotel and jumped straight in a taxi down to the Table Mountain cable-car station, quite a way out of town but it didn’t cost too much.We decided to follow a ‘40-minute’ trail we’d read about somewhere, the basic idea is to follow the little yellow feet painted on the floor every now & again. One of the first things we saw on the mountain (besides the staggering view) was a Dassie (or Hyrax) which I labelled a Wombat through lack of any other suitable means of description. As it turns out they are fairly similar animals, the funny little creature was just sat on a rock staring at people. We walked for quite a while and became aware we were heading for a pyramid-like monument in the distance, it seemed like an interesting goal so we kept on walking.
 The monument turned-out to be Maclear’s Beacon which at 1086m is the highest point on Table Mountain, the view from up there was spectacular. After a short break for a drink and snacks we headed back round the mountain aiming for the cable-car station via a different route to the one we came by. As we were walking we encountered two animals resembling Mountain Goats, we later identified these as Himalayan Tahrs, introduced by Cecil Rhodes onto his estate which then escaped and made a new home on the mountain.
As we were walking along the most treacherous path we had come across (often less than a foot from a sheer drop to sudden-death) cloud set in and began to roll up the side of the mountain from below us. This made the journey a little more awkward as the wind had picked up as well, at times it was hard to tell exactly which way was up and which way was down! We got through this part of the walk unscathed but we did get a little lost as we could barely make out the yellow feet we were supposed to follow. But we made it out and headed back to the hotel for a rest – the ‘40-minute’ walk had lasted 2½ hours!
In the evening we headed for a Chinese restaurant called The Noon Gun on Longmarket Street, the walk was almost as long as the one on the mountain and after getting to the top of a VERY steep hill it turned-out the restaurant was closed! As the restaurant had been James’ choice I spent almost the whole trip back down the hill being as sarcastic as I possibly could but James took it well. The whole thing turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we stumbled across an exclusive little Italian restaurant just off Bree Street called Strega. The atmosphere was great so we decided to eat there, sadly they had no free tables but they allowed us to eat in the lounge. Both the food and the service were fantastic, being sat in the lounge eating great food and drinking plenty of Windhoek in big comfy-chairs was a great way to end the day. At the end of the meal we filled-out a comment card and praised both the food and the service, after the waiter had read this he came over and told us that we’d made his day – he said that he’d been really busy and though he’d given us poor service. He told us that if we come again we should book as during the week they’d had to turn away the Mayor of Cape Town because they were fully booked!
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, AIDS, Cape Town, dassie, HIV, South Africa, table mountain, Travel, wombat
Headed down to the Tourist Information Office first thing, followed by a window-shopping a few Car Hire places. We settled for a company called Global Car Hire which offered reasonable rates and allowed drivers under 23 years old and booked the car for Monday morning. Mindful of the epic journey ahead of us we managed to find a stationary shop and bought a proper road-map to keep us on the straight and narrow. I was very keen not to have to navigate with a tourist atlas, I wanted the kind of map a real South African driver would use. We returned to the hotel and tried to book a tour on Robben Island for Sunday but everything was fully booked.
With only a few hours left until I had to be getting ready for the wedding we headed to the Planetarium. We had about an hour to wait for the show so we lodged ourselves in Dros, a bar/restaurant at the near-end of Kloof Street, it was quiet at lunchtime but the service was good nonetheless. The planetarium show was good, the main benefit being that it provided me with a way to get my bearings in the Southern Sky and to augment my general knowledge of South Africa. Besides, when travelling through hundreds of miles of South Africa knowing how to find South could be handy!
After the show I phoned Brad to arrange a pickup time & place then we had lunch and headed back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel I realised that my semi-smart clothes had been packed at the bottom of my bag for over seven days, by now the creases had creases. I went to the hotel desk to ask for an iron and was directed to a creepy room just off the first floor, it was the kind of place you expect to find a disfigured relative chained to the wall (Re: The Goonies). In the end I got into the laundry room and frantically ironed my clothes so that by the end they didn’t look so creased – more gently undulating.
I was picked-up by Brad at 4pm outside The Purple Turtle, we then headed back to Brad’s place to pick up Tyra where I also met some of Brad’s family. Brad drove to the wedding to arrive for about 5pm, shortly after taking seats the ceremony began.
 The service was conducted by a friend of the bride and was held in one of the loveliest places a wedding could be held. The couple were married against a backdrop of Constantia wine lands beneath two old & massive trees (a symbol of a long-lasting partnership). The cutting of the cake and speeches were done in the garden-area of the restaurant and were set against the backdrop of Table Mountain – you really couldn’t find a more perfect place.
 A meal followed with plenty of time for socialising and meeting the odd new person, Justin was there, along with his sister and his girlfriend. After the meal & quick goodbyes to Karl (a very busy man with 140 guests!) I shared a taxi back to Cape Town with Justin & the two girls. The cab dropped us off in Gardens where one of Justin’s friends drove the others down to Observatory, dropping me off at the bottom of Long Street. The ride back was great – Justin and I were in the back of a truck with the wind rushing past us – an activity which really works in a nice climate! I walked back up Long Street, stopping at a newsagents for water (in-case James didn’t get the chance) and got back to the hotel to wake James up so I could get in.
While I had been at the wedding James sat around the hotel and went through the guidebooks for future reference and thought a little more about the route from Cape Town to Johannesburg. He then walked to Computaria to do a little surfing and emailing, bought some bottled water then returned to the hotel (no need for me to have bothered). For the evening James went to Kennedy’s Cigar Bar for bar-snacks and drinks in the company of a considerate and amenable waitress.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Cape Town, Cigar Bar, Kennedys, planetarium, South Africa, Travel, wedding
We woke up and went down for breakfast, an unusual setup but the full complement was there – fruit juice, cereal, tea, coffee & fried goods. After breakfast we wandered down Long Street to Computaria, an internet café, surfed for a while and found out the details for my day at the wedding.
We popped back to the hotel to drop off & pick up some things and the manager called us over to the desk. It turned out that the journalist who interviewed us yesterday was from the Cape Times and both mine and James’ names appeared in an article about the exchange rate for the Rand and Cape Town tourism, I even managed to get in a direct quote! The manager had been reading the Cape Times and spotted our names, we’d not been in the country for 24 hours and we’d already got in the local paper!
 We then headed down to the Castle of Good Hope, the oldest building in South Africa built by the Dutch but ran by the English until fairly recently. Our (free) guided tour was hosted by a gentleman named Sasa who not only knew a lot about the history of the castle and also put the facts across in an amusing way. We spent quite a while wandering around the castle then headed across town (in a route somehow both circular and zigzagged), gathered-up as many copies of the Cape Times as we could hold & headed back to the hotel. Thankfully our bags had been delivered so we now had a full complement of clothing and most importantly underwear! Tired by the convoluted wanderings of the afternoon James had a sleep; I went back to Computaria to print off a few last details about the wedding and called Brad (another wedding guest) who offered to give me a lift to the wedding.
In the evening we decided to head to Kloof Street (about an hour’s walk from town) which we’d read was a good area for restaurants, we ended-up in a bar/restaurant called Cool Runnings. Everything there had a Jamaican theme to it, the atmosphere was superb and the food was excellent – both of us had curry (James had meat, I had veggie) and we shared a veggie snack basket called ‘Da Rabbit Food’. James had a good amount of Windhoek and Ash had a couple of pints of a cocktail called the Pan Galactic Gargleblaster!
On the way back we decided to visit a club I had read about called More, the DJ was playing house music & the bar was serving Vodka & Redbull – what more could we need?
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Cape Town, Castle, Castle of Good Hope, South Africa, Travel
After the scant-amount of sleep we could get we woke up to a particular kind of breakfast unique to airline-food, not entirely unpleasant but I struggled to find the reason why. We landed in Johannesburg for refuelling and a change of cabin crew before flying off to Cape Town where we arrived at 11:30 local time.
After passing through passport control I was called to the baggage handing desk to be told that both sets of luggage had not managed to get on the flight from Amsterdam. After some form filling and visually indicating what type of bags we had (from a huge checklist on two sides of A4) we were able to leave. Karl had arranged a cab to pick us up from the airport to take us to out hotel, throughout the journey we noticed little signs which proved we were no longer in England.
After arrival and check-in at the Tudor Hotel in Greenmarket square we had a walk into town to buy some clothes to wear from Edgar’s (a department store) and a few other essential items (e.g. Bottled Water & Crisps) from Shoprite. We cashed some Travellers Cheques in the Tourist Information Office where we also got interviewed by a journalist, asking questions about out trip to Cape Town. Upon returning to the hotel we grabbed a nice long sleep to recharge our batteries before going out for the evening.
The first order of the evening was to find a bar and with this in mind we wandered down Long Street and came across Kennedy’s Cigar Bar, both a restaurant and bar with live jazz music after dark, it was here we sampled out first South African beer – Castle. We drank in both Kennedy’s and the Long Street Café before we got to Mama Africa, a restaurant recommended in one of our guide books. Unfortunately Mama’s was closed for a private party so we headed into town in search of a restaurant, we found one but it didn’t offer much in the way for vegetarians (I’m an awkward vegetarian in the fact that I don’t really like vegetables). As luck would have it we ended up on Long Street again where Mama Africa was now open so we ate. The food was great, James had the Mixed Game Grill (Ostrich, Springbok, Kudu and Crocodile) and I had a pasta dish.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Cape Town, Cigar Bar, Kennedys, luggage, South Africa, Travel
I woke-up in Guildford, slightly disorientated after spending the New Year in Deal, we all had a great time over there though poor James did get a bit messy on Murphy’s and champagne. We finished a few last-minute packing chores & checking that we had passports and tickets (I have a well-earned reputation for forgetting, losing, washing and generally befouling passports). The taxi arrived about 11am and off we went to London Heathrow.
We passed through check-in with very little waiting time, just enough for last-minute calls to family & the ‘do we need this in hand-luggage?’ checks. I had been to Malta a few months before and flew from the same terminal so the layout was pretty familiar, especially the directions to the nearest bar! Heathrow was not too busy – plenty of time for wandering around and making last-minute purchases such as money-clips and disposable cameras.
At about an hour before the potential boarding time it was announced that due to dense fog in Amsterdam our plane was delayed by what eventually became 3½ hours. Having exhausted most of the potential activities in the terminal we sat down and read, I watched the planes taking off and landing – something I never tire of. We arrived in Amsterdam with just enough time to make our connecting flight though were rather confused whilst running though the airport chasing a flight to Johannesburg rather than Cape Town. We boarded safely and waited for some time for another delayed plane so that a few more passengers could make their connection.
The flight was long and arduous, neither of us slept for more than a couple of hours but were suitably entertained by the in-flight movies, Rush Hour 2 and Legally Blonde, as well as a documentary about Ewan McGregor in the rainforest with Ray Mears. During the flight we were well-attended to by the stewards and stewardesses who worked consistently hard throughout the journey.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: Africa, Amsterdam, Cape Town, flight, heathrow, Johannesburg, South Africa, Travel
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