Fri 8th May

The start of my African adventure, a 20 day overland trip from Cape Town to Victoria Falls! I got the coach to Heathrow in the afternoon for my South African Airlines flight to Cape Town which would be leaving at 9pm. I had an evening meal at a place called (very aptly) Giraffe's which consisted of a chicken and bacon club sandwich with wedges. It was very nice, 3 slices of toast with a thick piece of chicken and slice of bacon so thick it was more akin to a gammon steak.

On boarding my flight, I discovered I had a whole row to myself! I got another meal an hour into the flight, a nice chicken curry. Even with a whole row to myself though, the seats were too narrow to get a decent nights sleep.


Sat 9th May

My flight touched down half an hour early at 9.30am this morning. I got a filling breakfast on the plane of omelette, sausage, mushrooms and fried tomato. Cape Town must be the quickest international airport I've ever got through. It took about 5 minutes to get through immigration, my bag had arrived within another 10 minutes and then I was out of the airport. I'd arranged an airport transfer and my driver was waiting for me even though the flight was early. It was then off to my hotel, Saasveld Lodge, in his rickety taxi.

Now, before the trip, I couldn't fail to have read articles about how dangerous South Africa was, with murders and robberies commonplace. The first sight of my lodge didn't dispel those fears - there were iron gates outside and a metal grille security door over the entrance. Also, for someone who doesn't see a lot of black African people around at home and coming from a society which associates such people with crime and poverty, it was slightly worrying seeing virtually everyone walking around was black. Of course, it was just a mental attitude and prejudice which needed adjusting but travel is a learning experience as well as an opportunity to see the sights. I also had quite a lot of trouble trying to understand the South African accent, and it got quite embarrassing at times asking people to repeat themselves many times.

After visiting the supermarket to get some lunch (samosas with some sort of meat filling), I had my first tour which I'd booked through Cape Rainbow Tours beforehand to visit Table Mountain and a City Tour. I was the only one on the tour it turned out. I was taken to Table Mountain to start with where I got a cable-car to the top for great views over Cape Town. The cable-car wasn't too much fun if you were afraid of heights though, the floor was rotating in case people were too lazy to walk around themselves and the cab got extremely close to the rocks at some points.

The City Tour was by minibus with some walking parts. The most interesting parts were the South Africa Museum and the Bo-Kaap Quarter. I only had 25 minutes at the Museum so rushed through it but I could easily have spent 2-3 hours there. There was a good animals section with some massive fish, and some interesting ceremonial costumes. The Bo-Kaap Quarter was a Muslim district where all the houses were painted in a variety of garishly bright colours. The story goes that a doctor painted his house to distinguish it from the others, and then the whole area liked it so decided to paint theirs as well.

I had dinner at a nearby restaurant called Arnold's - steak and wedges. Amstel beer was only R15 a bottle (~£1.20) so I had a few of those. I was still hungry afterwards so decided to order the starter of spring rolls. The various game meats on the menu looked interesting (springbok, oryx, warthog ribs, ostrich) but I didn't want to order one and not like it. They also did a four meat platter so I may have to come back and try that. An early night then as I was knackered.

Sun 10th May

After a good old English breakfast this morning comprising eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, orange juice and tea, I was picked up earlier than expected for my Cape Peninsula tour, with the same company as yesterday. There was actually someone else on the tour today, Wim from the Netherlands, and he wanted to go up Table Mountain which is why I was picked up early too. While he was doing that, I was taken up nearby Signal Hill for alternative views over Cape Town. I thought the views from there were equally as good as from Table Mountain, but there weren't the hordes of tourists as there were at the latter. In fact, there was only one other car there. A hidden gem.

My tour was a full day drive from Cape Town to Cape Point and back, stopping at points of interest and for photo opportunities. We visited Duiker Island to see seals sunbathing, Boulder's Beach and their colony of penguins, Simonstown for lunch, the Groot Constantia Wine Estate (although we didn't go in as neither of us really wanted to go wine tasting), Cape Point for the picture at the Cape of Good Hope sign, Cape Point Lighthouse via a funicular railway, an ostrich farm, and camel rock.

I had a take-away pizza in the evening and went to bed early after a long and tiring day.



Mon 11th May. Tour Day 1

I had a township tour today, again with Cape Rainbow Tours, and again I was the only one on the tour. We had a quick detour round the Bo-Kaap Quarter so I could get some photos. Then it was onto the District 6 Museum. District 6 was an area of Cape Town where all blacks and coloureds were evicted to townships as it was designated a whites-only zone, being so close to the city. Whole communities and generations of friendships were lost. We had a drive around District 6 afterwards - in this post-Apartheid era, the area is now largely derelict. A handful of new houses have been built to house the ex-residents with the intention of all those wanting to return eventually being housed, but it is difficult to imagine the will and the money would be there to see the process through.

We then drove into a township. A township is an urban area for non-whites who have been forcibly evicted from areas which have been designated for whites only. Much of the township areas are basically slums, although recently post-Apartheid, there are more affluent areas where newer houses have been built. As we drove around, there was a great variety in the style of dwellings. At one end, there were areas which resembled a shanty town with corrugated sheet metal huts used as living quarters, and metal shipping containers serving as shops. Two storey, six bedroom hostels had been built to originally house 16 males with 2-3 beds in each room and communal dining and washing areas, but these now housed up to 16 families with more than one family per room. The communal areas were so derelict that they appeared as if they had been condemned for demolition. There were also new family homes which had built - these had metal bars on the doors and windows and a spiked and barbed-wire fence round the small garden. Each township had infrastructure in terms of shops, schools, a taxi and bus station, etc.

An enterprising individual had set up a B&B in the township, Vicky's B & B, and we also paid a visit to it. I'd actually read about this in a travel book I had read beforehand (Peter Moore's Cape Town to Cairo account) and it had so piqued my interest that I really wanted to pay a visit. The B & B was actually very nice inside, with very comfortable bedrooms and well decorated communal areas. It would have been quite interesting to have stayed there! There was also a bar across the road mentioned in the book that I paid a visit to. It had metal bars on the bar separating the customers from the staff and bottles were just passed through the gaps. I bet there'd been a few interesting nights there!

In the afternoon, I paid a visit to Robben Island, reached by a very choppy 30 minute catamaran ride. All I knew about it beforehand was that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there. However, the full history of the island was much more enlightening. We had a coach tour of the island and the guide explained that it had 300-400 years of history, serving in periods as a leper colony, mental asylum, WWII base and prison for political prisoners. We then had a tour inside the prison by a former inmate who recounted the harsh conditions under which they were incarcerated - shared dorms, meagre rations, no heating, no shoes or coats, solitary confinement. They were made to work in a limestone quarry where they moved rocks from A to B and back to A, just to try and break their spirit. We were shown Nelson Mandela's former cell. The most moving part of the tour was the guide's closing speech as he told us that after being released when Apartheid ended, the former inmates had foregone revenge and forgiven their former warders - it was only through forgiveness that an end to hatred would come and give hope for a peaceful, integrated South Africa.

In the evening, it was time for my tour pre-departure meeting where everyone could be introduced to each other (and catch our first sight of our tour truck). Que and Robert would be our tour guides. They were both Zimbabwean. Que was the main guide, Robert was the driver and assistant who was learning the ropes. They would also do most of the cooking. The other members of the tour (and there weren't many of them) were Patricia and Barbara, sisters from Switzerland, Soo, a student from South Korea, Doug from the US, and Vernon from Cape Town, who worked for Expedition Africa from whom Imaginative Traveller sub-contracted the tour, he would be doing the first part of the tour as part of his job.

We had dinner at Arnold's that evening. I had the four game platter this time - the springbok and oryx were like beef but leaner and I liked them, the crocodile (the ostrich was off) tasted like fish and didn't do much for me as it was very bony, and the warthog ribs were like pork ribs but bright red and very sticky. Tomorrow, we'd be leaving Cape Town on our long journey through four countries to Victoria Falls.