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Jan 16
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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.