Well that’s our first week – and our first continent – over
now. I’ve started writing this in the lounge at Johannesburg airport as we
await the long flight to Sydney followed by an onward flight to Auckland, where
we have a couple of days to recover before boarding our cruise on Saturday.
South Africa was great – Franschhoek, Hermanus then Cape
Town. Our first hotel in the wine valley was probably the best we’ve ever
stayed in. Low rise, with a number of what appeared to be older houses upgraded
to suites, all surrounding a little grass park and a lovely little private pool
– it was a sheer delight.
The hotel – Le Quartier Francais – also had an in-house
highly rated restaurant that we had booked
a meal in on Wednesday night (which incidentally was fantastic), but
also there was an adjacent brewpub owned by the hotel. What more could we ask
for?
The hotel also owns one of the local vineyards and we were
shuttled there – and also 2 other non-related vineyards – on a slightly
decadent Wednesday morning.
Two nights there gave us a lovely flavour of the area – and
it’s one we wouldn’t hesitate returning to – but on Thursday morning we were
off to the whale-watching coast and the pretty little seaside town of Hermanus.
It was out of season, of course, for the whales, but our accommodation, which
was basically an upmarket B & B, had a superb hillside location, ideal for
winter viewing. The slight downside was that we were a few miles out of town
but we discovered a lovely clifftop walk that could have taken us there. The
problem was we stumbled upon it unprepared – no fluids and no sunscreen – so we
only did about half of it before feeling the need to turn back and get the car.
The next bit was composed in Sydney and we pick up the story
where I left off in Cape Town:
Friday arrived and that was when we drove in to Cape Town
itself, returning our hired car and checking in to the upmarket Taj hotel. We
walked down to the V & A waterfront and had a couple of beers in one of the
two adjacent brewpubs I remembered from a previous golfing trip. They’re both
apparently now owned by the same person and, if my memory isn’t failing me, the
quality has dropped a bit.
The hotel did a 2 hour walking tour on Saturday morning and
the morning mists cleared to leave Table Mountain looking resplendent, so we
decided to alter our original plan to go up there on Sunday and instead took
the cable car in the afternoon. We walked a fair bit at the top but we could
have walked for days – some great hiking round there.
Afterwards we took an Uber out to visit a brewpub I had
spotted online but when we got there it was closed, as was another nearby one.
Our timing was bad so we just returned to the hotel.
Sunday was now free so we decided to have a fairly lazy day
– we took a walk in the park in the morning and then returned to the hotel to
ask the concierge for a recommendation for a nice outdoor space with good views
and a choice of beers. “No problem, sir – head for Grand Africa Café on the
beach – I’ll take you there myself”. Excellent recommendation.
We had booked tickets for Robben Island on our arrival on
Friday – we had hoped to be able to go there a bit earlier than our last day in
CT, but it’s a very busy attraction and the earliest we could get tickets was
Monday afternoon. It was worth the wait, however. Our guide round the prison
was an ex cell mate of Mandela. We’ll never forget his booming voice and his
style of delivery which involved movement of his arms in tempo with his speech
– a bit like an orchestra conductor.
When our tour was over, we stumbled across a nice brewpub
overlooking the waterfront and ate there. We walked back to our hotel – it was
nearly 6:30 pm but there was still plenty of daylight. About halfway there, I
became aware of a group of locals following us a bit too closely for comfort. I
had my backpack on – I really should have shifted it to my front, but it was a
little too late for that so I decided we should just up the pace a bit and
weave across the streets. We did eventually shake them off but discovered that
they had managed to unzip my backpack but fortunately hadn’t taken anything.
There was little of value there anyway but it was still a slightly unnerving
experience.
I’d been aware of an earlier (failed) attempt to pickpocket
me and our other exciting misadventure in Cape Town was when we first arrived
at the airport and I took a wrong turn in our hired car, taking us through one
of the townships. It was the middle of the day and the place was buzzing –
street stalls, kids coming out of school etc – all very innocent it transpired,
but it was somewhere that European tourists in a hired car shouldn’t really
have been. Nothing happened but our senses were now extremely alert.
The last incident of note was a bit of a personal faux pas.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve banged my head in recent times. I
seem to have developed a bit of a lack of spatial awareness and this time was a
classic example. I’ll spare you all the intimate details other than to say it
all happened in our hotel bathroom – I speared my head on the acute corner of a
towel rail. Blood was gushing everywhere and I had to call Jo for help. The
flow was eventually stemmed and I got duly plastered as you can see below but
it was still seeping a few days later and it’s very tender still. What a
numpty.
Now for the photos. Facebook has recorded our movements
pretty well but I’ve tried to pick a few shots that haven’t appeared yet on
social media, starting with Jo having a dip in the pool at our hotel in
Franschhoek:
The photo above was taken outside our suite on our way to
the gourmand dinner at La Petite Colombe and here is the menu:
Here’s a few from our Hermanus cliff walk:
On our walking tour of Cape Town, we were shown a couple of
the benches left as a reminder of the iniquities of the days of apartheid – one
for “whites” and one for “non-whites”:
We didn’t know the German Government had donated a black of
the Berlin Wall to the city, but we did expect to see some ceremonial dancing
for the tourists:
Here’s the “head shot”:
Finally posted this from our hotel in Auckland. We managed about 3 hours sleep so we're now about to hit the town.
