Captivating Cape Town, South Africa

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Colourful Bo Kaap area of Cape Town

So, we have finally made it to Cape Town! Quite a milestone it's turned out to be as we had assumed we would get here a lot sooner - seeing as we originally entered South Africa over 4 and a half months ago back in April! We seemed to get waylaid by Swaziland, Mozambique, Lesotho and the rest of South Africa in the mean time.

We were lucky that we were also able to synchronize with our Cape Town hosts Elmara and Lionel - a lovely retired (but super busy) couple that we met in the Columbia Icefields near Banff about year ago while they were holidaying in Canada!  We had been communicating back and forth over the last few months about our arrival to CT so I think they were excited to hear about all our adventures as soon as we walked in the door.

View from across the road in Blaauwberg Strand

It was so nice to feel welcomed and special. They also have a great place 15km north of Cape Town centre in Blaauwberg Strand, their large house being right on Beachfront Road overlooking Table Bay and majestic Table Mountain. What a treat!


First chore in CT was to get our onward plans sorted. Namibia is our next port of call and we are considering taking an Overland Tour (on a big 4x4 truck with about 20 other people). Not usually our thing - big tours - but Namibia has little in the way of public transport, not super-great roads and is expensive for car hire (just like SA really). After lots of debating we decided that we would do the tour - 19 days through Namibia, Botswana ending in Zambia at Victoria Falls. I had a great brain wave (even though I do say so myself!): a working compromise for us. This was to split the trip into two parts: after 10 days, we'd get off the tour in Windhoek, then pick up the next one from cape Town two weeks later. Our tour agent, Shawn at Detour Africa, managed to work it with the tour operator.

V & A Waterfront

Brilliant! This would mean that we would have time to explore more of Namibia on our own (and not have to rush around with a tour group). Phew! A big worry off our shoulders. But still a big chunk of $$ out of our pockets!

Now that we had sorted that out we could relax and enjoy Cape Town. Robben Island was our first attraction - Nelson Mandela spent 18 years or so in prison here, at this now Unesco World Heritage Site. The boat over to the island was great as we got some spectacular views of Cape Town and Table Mountain from the water. The tour was a little unusual as we were mostly on a bus touring the island. Our guide, Yasif Mohammed, was very entertaining though. He'd pretty much toured every VIP that comes to the island including Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela himself (once he was freed). He talked us through the various buildings and the quarry where Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners would discuss plans whilst the guards would try to demoralise them by making them take the stones from one side to the other of the quarry for no good reason. We then toured the prison itself with an ex-inmate which must have been painful for him as he shared memories and described the conditions that they had to endure. We saw the pretty small cell that Mandela lived in all those years - approx 7x7ft. Our guide also described how different prisoners got treated differently. 'Blacks' and 'coloureds' were supposed to carry IDs that were famously burnt in protest. They also had less food to eat which was also less nutritious!

Michelle making ostrich omelettes with Table Mtn behind

The great thing about staying at someone's home is that you have a whole kitchen open to you (if they don't mind you taking it over) and Elmara certainly didn't. I was very excited to start work on my ostrich Spanish omelette (or 10!) which I had been dreaming about for a few days now. As Marika (the cook at Oudtshoorn backpackers who had started the hole in the shell for me) had shown me, I shook the egg (carefully) to mix the yolk and white together, burst the inner membranes and about 24 chicken eggs-worth of egg drained out. A 'cholesterol bomb' as our guide in Oudtshoorn had called it!  The omelettes fed us for the next few days and were delicious!

The delicious Eastern Food Bazaar

The weather was beautiful the first three days that we were in Cape Town and we just assumed that it was like that all the time. Wrongggg! The rain came and we realised at this time of year the window of opportunity to climb Table Mountain is tenuous. The next few days we sheltered in museums and the planetarium. I think our most important discovery was the Eastern Food Bazaar in the city centre: a food complex with various counters serving the best and cheapest Indian food we'd eaten since England. For 35 Rand ($5 or 3.50 quid) we could eat like Kings. Over the course of the next 10 days we found ourselves there at least 6 times! So, when we weren't eating Ostrich omelette, we were at the Food Bazaar. It was bloody marvellous!

The day the weather turned to beautiful and sunny, we had pre-organised to do a small hike with friends, so we weren't able to hike Table Mountain. It would have to wait.
That morning (about three days into the Rugby World Cup) was South Africa's first game - and they are Rugby crazy down here. Where better place to watch than amongst Capetonians at their famous Victoria and Albert Waterfront Amphitheatre on the big screen.

Springbok rugby game at Waterfront

There was a great atmosphere and everyone was in good spirits. Luckily for South Africa, Wales missed a few kicks/conversions at the end, and it was a close game ending at 17-16 to SA. Wales should really have won!

With Maquinna on Lion's Head

Right after the game, we met up with Lee and Maquinna, a young couple we met in Swaziland (at our most favourite backpackers - if you remember our raves about that). They picked us up in a borrowed car for a short hike up Lion's Head, a small but nevertheless impressively-shaped peak beside Table Mountain. Great to see them and catch up with stories of both ours and their recent travels. And because the day was clear, we had stunning views up at Table Mountain and down towards Camp Bay and our next Cape Town destination - Hout Bay.  *Mush