I have said many times that part of turning 50 is realizing that you are no longer 25. When we were on our honeymoon, I remember landing in countries and not even knowing what language they spoke there! Hey, we would find a hotel, jump on a bus and everything would be just fine.
For the Africa part of our trip, we figured that things needed to be a bit more organized. We were concerned about security, and all of the game lodges need to be booked in advance, so everywhere we went there would be some dude waiting for us at the airport with my last name written on a piece of cardboard. Except for Namibia, where we drove ourselves, and South Africa.
For South Africa, we figured that we could just wing it. We booked two nights at the Hilton in Cape Town and decided to figure out the rest after we landed.
We go in late on Sunday night, and went for a walk along Cape Town's beautiful water front on Monday morning. We got some tourist info, and decide on what we wanted to do for the rest of our time - Table Moutain, Cape of Good Hope, wine tasting and shark cage diving. Easy. Now we just needed someplace to stay.
Impossible.
EVERY hotel in Cape Town was booked. I had prebooked the Hilton for $90 a night. We could stay one more night there for $400, but it was booked solid after that. I found. "4 star" hotel in the Internet, but when I tried to book it, it turned out to be a backpackers lodge and we would be staying in a room with 6 other guys! It turns out that the Volvo Around the World Sailing race was in town a along with a convention. The nearest hotel room was 40 km away.
Ok, plan B. Car rental! Also not that easy, because for safety reasons we insist on driving an automatic. I can drive on the wrong side of the road, I can drive a standard, I can't do both! We managed to find a local agency with one automatic.
Tuesday morning we hiked up the iconic Table Mountain. It is a beautiful site. I am happy to say that nobody passed us going up or down - although the latter is true only because I strategically waited a minute for the two 18 year old Italians to leave the top before us! They ran the entire way - we saw them later from our taxi. Ah, to have young knees again!
Renting the car turned out to be very serendipitous. We drove through he beach suburbs of Cape Town - they are gorgeous! I really felt like we were in California or Sydney. Further down the coast, the rugged terrain reminded both of us of Nova Scotia.
We stayed at a cute boutique hotel on the cape peninsula. The front desk clerk was amazed that we got such a cheap rate, since apparently we secured their last room. Mentioning that it was our 25th wedding anniversary secured an ocean view table for breakfast the next day.
That evening, we had decided to be "good" (well, Steve was pushing to be good) but Jackie decided that since we bagged Table Mountain ( hey, the true summit, not just the top of the cable car!) we could be "bad" and she asked if she could order a glass of wine. The answer: NO. The restaurant we chose for dinner had only been open a week, and had not yet secured their liquor license, so they could not sell us a glass of wine. BUT, they could give it away for free! So they kept plying us with free ( and very good!) wine all night. There was a two for one entrée special on, so a plate of yellow fin tuna, a platter with shrimp, fish, calamari, mussels and fish cakes along with this amazing triple chocolate desert came to $19. Jackie left a 50% tip!
The next day we started with penguins!! These are African penguins, although they used to be called Jackass penguins because of their braying calls. I'll try to post a video on facebook later. They are hilarious!
Then off to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, the most south western point in Africa and the location of the meeting of the Indian and Atlantic oceans.
Next to Hermanas, a super cute tourist town where we saw whales as close a 50 meters offshore. We were supposed to go shark cage diving today, but the ocean is too rough so our trip was cancelled. Shark cage diving is not as scary as it sounds - it is actually shark cage snorkelling. The operators through some bait into the ocean, and since the great white sharks are surface feeders you can watch them from the safety of a cage that is bolted onto the side of the boat. Oh well, next time!
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