Cape Town

We arrived in Cape Town yesterday morning, after a very long flight from Australia, via Singapore. We were picked up at the airport and transferred to our hotel. We are staying in Sea Point, a very nice area on the coast. The staff here are really lovely. This morning at breakfast one of the ladies asked us if we were born in Australia and when we said yes, she said we didn’t have a very strong Australian accent, she thougth we would be saying “Goon on ya” and calling her Sheila. So of course after we finished eating I said “That was really delicious, good on ya Sheila”. I couldn’t help myself, but she got a good laugh out of it. After breakfast we spent some time walking around the neighbourhood and then we had a well deserved sleep. Last night we ate at a local Greek restaurant and the food was delicious.

Today we were picked up by or local guide Sharon and taken out for the day. We started by driving down the coast to Hout Bay, it was a lovely drive, only marred by the weather, it rained on and off all day. We drove along Chapmans Peak Drive from Hout Bay to Noordhoek along a road that is only open sometimes and we got through just before it closed at 10am. I do not know why they close the road…. They do a lot of funny things in South Africa, but they are very nice about it.

We stopped at False Bay and saw the romantic meeting of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, not to be confused with the real meeting of these two oceans, as that is just around the corner…. Hence the name False bay as many sailors got confused and thought they had reached the Indian ocean at False bay. We also visited the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point.

We spotted our first African Animals today, which was a real treat as we thought we would have to wait until Botswana for that. We saw Bontebok, Baboons, ostriches and elands. It was very exciting… We also saw the small African Penguins, they are larger than our Fairy Penguins though.

We visited Simon’s Town and saw a statue of a Great Dane, the only dog ever to be listed in the South African Navy, he was Able Seaman Just Nuisance and was buried with a full military funeral when he died and even the Admiral had to attend. Strange but they are very nice…

We stopped at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens which we had been told were wonderful and neither Narelle or I was very impressed to be honest. The guide left us to wonder and we sprinted around the place for all of about 20 minutes, it had barely any flowers and no decent ones at all.

We dined at another local restaurant tonight. The waiter went off to bring us menus and then placed another chair at our table, Narelle was concerned he was bringing more diners to our tiny table, but I just thought he was arranging another table nearby. He then brings another chair and places it beside the first and then puts a huge 4 foot high and 2.5 foot wide black board on it, as he places another black board on the second chair, I click, he is bringing us the menu…. And they did that all night with all of the new diners. They didn’t always get chairs. Sometimes they lent them against heaters, or other diners, it was all very unusual, but they are very nice… I did wonder how much it costs to print paper menus, it would save a lot of room. I had my first meal of Ostrich meatballs on a bed of very hot fettuccini, after our meal Narelle was talking to me, but I couldn’t reply as I had ice sitting on my tongue… it was a really hot sauce

The difference between Blacks and Coloureds

Have you ever wondered about this, I have, I thought they were the same thing, but no. Our guide today was coloured and she explained it to us. If both of your parents are black, you are black, if one of your parents are white, you are coloured. So there you go…. Weird but they are very nice…

We learned to say Thank you very much in Afrikaans today. Buy a Donkey, yep, that’s what you say. Buy (although probably spelt different) means a lot and Donkey (Danke) means thank you in German, so buy a donkey is what you say. Our guide was very informative.

Up on the mountains they employ shark monitors or spotters for the swimmers and surfers. They use different coloured flags for different meanings and if there is no flag then there is no spotter on duty and you are on your own. The flags are As follows

Black flag = The spotter cannot see due to low clouds or whatever and you are on your own
Blue flag = All clear no sharks have been spotted
White flag with black shark on it = A shark has been spotted, get out of the water
Red flag or red and white stripped flag = There are sharks in the water. I have no idea why they have two different flags for this, our guide was hard to rein in at times and we couldn’t clarify everything she said.
They also have Baboon monitors that walk around and follow the baboons, if a baboon gets on the road and a car is coming they shoot paint balls at nearby rocks or trees and the baboons move on. They are very nice though.

I finally got the pictures to work, I hope you enjoy them.. more tomorrow

Til then cheers for now

Lones