Toe Watch: Cape Town

Jen mentioned in her Cape Town entry that I've had to go to the clinic here to have, essentially, three holes drilled in my toe. Despite hoping that the toe would eventually heal itself, it seems that it really didn't appreciate having a table dropped on it and decided instead to accumulate a rather spectacular build up of blood under the nail, thus facilitating the need for a pressure release in the form of my hol(e)y trinity.

So here's how it looks now.

NOTE: Not for the squeamish.

Well, I did tell you I was going to keep you updated...

Capers in Cape Town

Flipping heck. I'm now exhausted! It's been a crazy week in Cape Town.

We arrived on Sunday and after celebrating United's League win with Sean and seeing Van Der Sar raise the trophy, we went out for dinner at Arnolds to celebrate a wonderful tour and to say goodbye to each other. Unfortunately we had a mis-communication issue with Jay and so she wasn't with us which was sad. We tucked into ostrich burgers and other game meats and Drew treated us to a bottle of wine. Carol made a touching speech which had us in tears (well me at least) and Drew was ever the comedian. It also turned out that this was the last night we would see Mercedes, but we did get to meet her fella that night and he was lovely - I hope they find a way to stay together as Mercedes now heads back to Argentina.

On Monday Megan, Sean and I moved to a slightly cheaper backpackers and then Sean and I headed off to meet up with Krissie, the crazy Scot from our first Af-Trails tour. We walked down to the Waterfront in the grey and windy weather and studied the four nobel prize winner statues whilst we waited for her (to clarify, the Coca-Cola crate man in the background is not one of the four):

She arrived with Riaan (her bf) and we immediately hit the pub! (By the way Krissie, Riaan doesn't sound ANYTHING like your impression of him!). We couldn't stop talking as we caught up on events that had happened since we'd parted ways in Zanzibar all those weeks ago. Carol and Drew happened to show up at the same pub so we all had a good goss before Riaan had to leave to go to work in the casino and Krissie, Sean and I headed off in search of more beer. We stopped by another place to do 'taster' beers, had a quick look around the craft market and then met up with Stefan who had joined Krissie's tour after we had left it. I can't remember too much about the rest of this day, except that we met up with Megan and Carol for dinner at a Mexican restaurant that gave us free temporary transfer tattoos that we promptly stuck on ourselves.

On Tuesday we tried to get onto the Robben Island tour with Carol, but were far too late to get tickets so instead booked in for Friday. So we headed back to the backpackers on Long Street and nursed our hangovers watching films on DSTV. And then said goodbye to Megan (we seem to be losing one a day!)

We had decided to get our Mozambique visas in advance and so headed to the embassy on Wednesday morning. It's an incredibly efficient system. You hand your form in by 10am and get your visas and passports back by 3pm. UKPA could learn a thing or too from these guys! The sun had seemed to finally come out this morning, so we met up with Carol and headed up to Table Mountain to see if we could get up the cable car. Unfortunately no one told us that we could have saved the taxi fare because it was far too windy for it to be working. Still, the views were good.

We then found ourselves at a loose end about what to do for the afternoon. We found ourselves wondering through the gardens and then stumbling into the National Gallery. It was apparantly 'National Musuem Day' and so entrance was free. We wondered around a display of Indians in a Magazine called Drum from the 1960s - something that provoked an image of what life must have been life to have been an Indian in South Africa in that decade. Just as we finished, Sean discovered that the curator was about to give a free guided tour of the display and that there were also other 'free' treats going on at museums all over the city. So we headed to the South African Museum to try to get in on a 'Behind the Scenes of Archaeology' freebie. Turns out that we had the curator of the Archieology department all to ourselves and instead of the 20 minute tour we ended up speaking with him and being shown around the museums archives for about and hour and a half - it was really awesome as he talked us through different san paintings, their meanings, their lives. He was a really interesting character with a lot to say on all kinds of things. But we had to tear ourselves away as Carol had to leave on a jet plane. We had a fairwell beer with her back at Ashanti Gardens and said goodbye to the last man standing of our tour. Thus, sadly, it had now officially ended.

But our day was to continue. We spent the evening at the planetarium in two free one hour talks, the first on the indenginous people and the stars (how different local tribes interpret meaning, caldenarise rituals and their legends from the stars) and one about the stars in the Southern Hemisphere as of that month, what we could see, how to identify them, what they are called. It was really fasinating and both lecturers had so many interesting things to say. We went to bed that night truly delighted with our amazing free and unexpected finds!

The plan for Thursday was to be picked up by Krissie and Riaan and head off on a drive down to Simon's Town and around Cape Point. Fortunately for us Thursday turned out to be the first sunny day we had had in Cape Town so far. And that just set us up for an amazing day. We had coffee in Simonstown and then headed into the Toy Museum for a trip down toy memory lane. Stefan then joined us and we had beers on the waterside.

We then sauntered down to watch the marvell of seeing penguins on the beach (Sean and I couldn't help wondering at how well they walked on the sand compared to how we'd seen then walk on the snow and ice in Antarctica!)...

...before we drove down to Cape Point to take in the scenes of the Cape of Good Hope (where Riaan super kindly handed over the keys of his car to Sean so that he, Stefan and I could go into the National Park). I'll never forget the massive group of Italians that ruined any chance Stefan had of taking of good photo of us there! It was funny being back here. I'd been here once before by myself whilst working at iTouch and absolutely nothing had changed. It was really bizarre. I even saw the same type of animals at the same points of the drive like they'd stood there for years without moving.

We met up again with Krissie and Riaan at the entrance and drove around the cape for sunset. We saw amazing views on this drive, it was truly beautiful.

And then once the sun had set, we knew it was beer o'clock so headed to a nice little Spanish place for some yummy chili before heading back to Long Street where we started with shooters in Bobs and ended up at Dubliner's Irish Pub that had kept Sean and I up every night now with it's live band and basically things turned into this:

'Nuff said. Oh! Except for the fact that Krissie surprised us all with her sign language ability which happened to come out when we met a deaf gentleman named Richard who was staying in our backpackers. Nice one Krissie - without you we wouldn't have had that lovely chat with that really lovely man.

Needless to say on Friday we were feeling a little worse for wear, but had those Robben Island tickets to use! Turns out Stefan was on our same tour, so we all nursed our heads together. Again, another blinder of a day for us. We had been crazy lucky - the boat and that tour in the rain would not have been fun. The tour itself is a little strange because it's 40 mins on a bus with a guide talking you through buildings and then one hour with an ex inmate touring the prison. We saw the quarry where Nelson Mandela et al would discuss plans whilst the guards would try to demoralise them by literally making them take the stones from one side to the other of the quarry without point. We saw the cell that Mandela slept in all those years - it was very small. We were show the ID cards that 'blacks' and 'coloureds' were supposed to carry that were famously burnt in protest. We heard about the extensive censoring of the letters received by the inmates - such that they received something that read "Dear Bob" and nothing else. It's a very strange period in South African history, but one thing I can say is that nearly every local that we have met (black or white) are all positive about the future. There is a tremendous sense of pride here about building a beautiful country - together.

By Saturday Sean's toe was looking worse for wear so we decided to make use of our travel insurance and visit a doctor. We headed to the nearest Mediclinic where the doctor promptly drilled 3 holes in his nail and drained his toe of blood. ￡50 later and we were back in the hostel. We then because frustrated with South African opening hours as we discovered everythign on a Saturday closes at lunchtime and we should have gone to the Mediclinic in the afternoon and not the morning. Cape Town gives this false sense of security that you're back home, and then they go and do silly things like this - oh, and don't get me started on the whole 'we don't sell booze on a Sunday' thing - what's that all about?! Fortunately the lovely lady from East London who was staying in our backpackers with her group of trainee chefs kindly let us drink her wine. Probably trying to make amends for the crazy student of hers who had tried repeatedly whilst drunk to get into our room!

Sunday we spent planning our getaway. We have to leave Cape Town. We could stay here a lot longer, but we've already stayed longer than planned and if we don't go now, we'll never go!

And by Monday I discovered whilst packing up that I'd managed to lose $170 between Wednesday and now so we had to visit the police station to make a sworn afidavit, return to the Mediclinic to get some invoice paperwork and then pack for our early 5am bus start the next day. We finally, after much deliberation, had decided on staying at one place on the Garden Route, one on the Sunshine Coast and one on the Wild Coast to try to get a taster of what SA had to offer. It's such a big country really that we didn't have enough time to do much more and it's such a great country that it's ideal for family holidays - and much easier to see if you can afford to hire a car! So for now, we'll settle with our taster menu of the South African coast. But Cape Town has been a blast, it's a truly wonderful city.

Oh! And apparently they have this mountain...

Here are the photos:

BT76_Cape Town 22 - 30 May 2011

Sideways

Those of you who know Jennie and I well might have picked up, just very subtly and only from time to time, that we like wine. So it's fair to say that we were rather looking forward to spending a few days in wine country after crossing the South African border on our way to Cape Town.

The Stellenbosch region is of course South Africa's most celebrated wine producing zone, but we didn't have to wait until we were that far south to get our grape on, thanks to Drew's connections with Highlanders - a lovely campsite near Citrusdal in the Western Cape which makes its own wines and is also part of a local wine cooperative. Established by "Sparky" - an ex-electrician and overland guide who decided he wanted a change of tack - it's a lovely place and was a perfect stop to break our travels south.

We were booked into a hostel in Stellenbosch, so this would be our final night of camping and as such we had the rather tedious task of unpacking and cleaning pretty much the whole truck before we could get our evening started. They do say, however, that delayed gratification is a sign of maturity, and so we were feeling pretty bloody mature by the time we got up to our wine tasting session in the bar above the campsite. There we were treated to a tasting of seven different wines from the cooperative - accompanied by a most welcome plate of cheese. The wines were excellent - the Chenin Blanc and the Rooibos tea-infused African Ruby Vermouth were particularly good. And even better was when Drew bought a couple of bottles down for us to enjoy with our barbecue dinner. He's a good man, that Drew.

Wine appetite sufficiently whetted, it was on to Stellenbosch and our rather aptly named backpackers lodge, the Stumble Inn. Stellenbosch is, after Cape Town, the second oldest settlement in the Western Cape and it has the unmistakeable feel of a very classy, upmarket historic town, while the University - and the large student population that comes with it - gives the town a vibrant and energetic air as well. The food is great, and the ice cream is wonderful.

The old buildings, boutique shops, sidewalk cafes and gourmet restaurants were all well and good of course, but we were there for the wine and so we boarded a minibus and joined a day-long winetasting tour comprising four vineyards (Simonsig, Fairview, Dieu Donne and Boschendal) and a promised 25 tastings.

I won't go into detail about every vineyard and every wine, suffice it to say we had a fantastic day. Particular highlights included Mercedes winning a bottle of wine, the lovely views accompanying the wines up at Dieu Donne, Fairview - which not only combined our favourite wines of the day with a room of endless free cheese tastings but also gave us a close encounter with one of the local lizard critters, and finally the fact that through judiciously spreading our efforts (and lying through our teeth) we managed to increase our promised 25 tastings to something over 40. Result.

And thus ended the classy portion of the day's entertainment. After a day's wine drinking, and combined with the knowledge that you have to get up the next morning to make the final hop to Cape Town, you would think that the smart move would be to have an early night. We did this:

The drinks flowed at Stumble Inn, and then continued to do so at Trumpet Tree bar just around the corner, and I justified my indulgence by claiming that the ingestion of vast quantities of alcohol was healthy for me as it took away the pain of my crushed toe. I might have almost been ok had I stuck to wine, but I decided in my wisdom to help myself to a large collection of beers and shots as well (including one Stumble Inn version of a Jaegerbomb with some green stuff) - I assumed that if this was a poor idea then one of my more sober companions would have spoken up. The fact that none of my companions were remotely sober proved to be the minor yet fatal flaw in this plan.

I managed to stumble in to Stumble Inn (see what I did there?) at ridiculous o'clock and set a new personal best by needing three attempts to find my bunk in our dorm. The first (a top bunk) was empty but something clicked in the back of my head that I was sleeping in a bottom bunk, not a top one and so I tried again. The bottom bunk I then tried was occupied by Mercedes who - bless her - was thankfully as drunk as me and didn't even notice me nearly climbing into bed with her. Finally a voice rang out across the dark room "Sean, over here!" I responded to the effect of "thank you, disembodied voice lady!" and fell into my actual bed. Turns out the disembodied voice lady was Jen - who'd had the sense to call it a night a little earlier. So that was good.

The following morning was not. We've arrived now in Cape Town, which I have no doubt will look much nicer when I don't want to quietly die.

Things Jennie will Remember:

1) Our wine tastings at Simonsig:

Kaapse Vonkel

Chenin Blanc

Gewurztraminer

The SMV (Shiraz, Mourverde, Viognier)

Frans Malan Reserve

2) Our wine tastings at Fairview:

Sauvignon Blanc

Viognier

Viognier Special Late Harvest

Merlot

Cabernet Sauvignon

Pinotage

Goats Do Roam Rose

Goats In Villages Shiraz Pinotage

Special Reserve Chakalaka

Spice Route Chenin Blanc

La Capra Pinotage

La Capra Chenin Blanc

3) Our wine tastings at Dieu Donne:

Methode Cap Classique 2009

Sauvignon Blanc 2010

Merlot 2008/2007

Viognier 2008

Rose 2010

Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

Belair Rose

Rose 2010

Rose 2010

Rose 2010 (Well it was very nice!)

4) Our wine tastings at Boschendal:

1685 Chardonnay 2009

Blanc De Noir 2010

Le Bouquet 2010

Lanoy 2009

1685 Shiraz 2009

5) I can't remember anything else...I was drunk.

Here are the photos:

BT75_Highlanders and Stellenbosch 20 - 21 May 2011

A Tale Of Two Rivers

Our sleepover on the truck wasn't as bad as it could have been and it meant that when Drew set off at 5am we at least didn't have to pack up tents or get out of our sleeping bags. We set off towards Fish River Canyon and at about 8am reached the Ai-Ais entrance in the South. A quick pit-stop at a toilet to freshen up and then we drove on towards the canyon. Drew dropped us off at an information/look out point where we looked out over the sharp river bend of Hell's Corner:

Whilst Drew drove the truck (and the injured Sean) to the next look out point to set up for breakfast, the rest of us whilst enjoyed a leisurely walk along the top edge of the canyon.

The canyon measures 160km in length, 27km in width and the inner canyon reaches 550m making it the second largest canyon in the world after The Grand Canyon in the states. It is quite a sight. You can trek this canyon in a mere five days, but they limit the amount of licenses given to do so and as such it means you have to book a year in advance to do this. So we just looked out over the starting point instead.

Having breakfast in such an amazing spot was fantastic. It's sad to think that that tomorrow we leave Namibia. It's an incredible country with the most spectacular landscapes we have seen so far in Africa. We have been completely delighted by all our experiences here and that has earned Namibia the honour of being in my top ten favourite countries in the world.

We continued our drive to the border town of Noordoewer on the banks of the Orange River where we enjoyed a few drinks together looking across towards South Africa. And of course, that made me realise that tomorrow we hit wine country! Suddenly the smile came back onto my face.

Here are the photos:

BT74_Fish River Canyon and Orange River 18 - 19 May 2011