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South Africa so far - November 20, 2014

I arrived in Cape Town on Tuesday and after a quick taxi ride I arrived at my hotel. I was staying at a fairly average hotel in the gardens district of Cape Town. Was in an interesting area of lots of restaurants and cafe's and like a lot of Cape Town had an amazing view of Table Mountain.

I elected to stay in the hotel for dinner as I was not quite sure how safe it was to be walking the street (even if it was only 5 minutes away) to get dinner.

Next morning I was up bright and extremely early (0530) as I was being collected to do a hike up Table Mountain. My guide, Margaret an Irish woman who has lived in Cape Town for 30 years, collected me and off we were to Camps Bay to collect two French girls who has also nominated the same hike as me.

Well what an adventure.....

The hike started at the nominated spot at the base of Table Mountain and as we started the ascent there was a group of about 5 guys who were coming down the steps - one of them said something about us being courageous!
The penny should have dropped, and in fact it did.
We climbed for about 15 minutes. It was freezing cold (I had my fleece on) the wind was buffeting you so much that at times I was losing my footing and the wind was blasting into your face........I was not a happy camper.
The guide, Margaret, brought the three of us together and basically said that we had another 2 hours to the top of Table Mountain and it was likely that the conditions would deteriorate. What did we want to do? Well, duh... we decided that we would go down.

We decided to have a go at hiking up Lion Head, which is not exactly Table Mountain but it is in the Table Mountain Chain.
But wait the French Girls announce they are afraid of heights, so after dropping them back at their accommodation in Camps Bay, Margaret and I tackled Lion Head.
So by this stage it is starting to get very hot but I am happy to say I made it half way to the top. I will send some photos.. the views are absolutely stunning. It is quite a challenging climb. At some points you need to climb up ladders and scramble across with the use of chains.

After finishing the hike I returned to the hotel, had a quick shower and headed off to the waterfront. Like a lot of cities the dock areas of Cape Town have been revitalised and now it is full of boutique hotels that are now housed in converted warehouses, fancy restaurants, craft markets and up market shops. There are buskers playing Cape Malay jazz and Zulu Choirs.
The Volvo around the world Yacht race was starting in a couple of days so of course there were lots of very flash yachts and equally flash crew wandering around the water front. Quite a sight....

That evening I met the group at 1800 for the introductory meeting. For a small group tour we are actually not that small. There are 18 travellers - 9 Canadians, 5 Germans, one Danish girl (who happens to be a photo journalist and I am going to take particular attention in regards to how she lines up her photos and what she takes photos of) one Irish girl, an Australian girl who lives in London and me.
We are all doing the Cape Town to Windhoek (Capital of Namibia) and then only 9 of us are continuing up through Botswana and Zambia.

On Thursday we set off early and have travelled about 500km along the south west coast of South Africa.
Along the way we stopped at a winery and indulged in a wine and chocolate tasting. The wine maker had paired 6 different wines with 6 different organic chocolates. Truely marvellous.
Later we arrived at Lamberts Bay which is a seaside town of South Africa, famous for its potatoes (the fishing industry has gone to the pack and they grow potatoes by the sea and the old fish processing plant now processes potatoes. Who would have thought).

Dinner on Thursday night was at this amazing seafood restaurant in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. You drive down a dirt track about 15 minutes and you are in a shelter shed sort of building which is right on the beach. This has been a family run restaurant on the site for the past 28 years.
For 200 rand ( $20) you eat as much seafood as you want.
There was pickled fish, smoked fish, grilled, steamed, fried. There was seafood paella, grilled lobster, calamari, mussels - on my goodness it was wonderful.

It was however freezing as the ocean breeze was more like an atlantic blast straight from the antarctic. However the host did come around handing out blankets.
We were all quite the sight. Feasting on lobster, washing it down with a fine South African white while wrapped in an assortment of blankets. As I have said before : fashion does have to take a back seat when one is travelling in Africa :)

And so the adventure continues.
This morning as usual we are up nice and early. Breakfast at 0700 and then it is a long drive up the western coast of South Africa and then sometime mid afternoon we have a border crossing into Namibia. It is probably an 8 hour bus trip today. The bus is however a 35 seater and there are only 18 travellers so there is plenty of space to spread out.

Have done some wildlife spotting from the bus already. We happened to run over a black mamba snake on the way to Lamberts Bay. The black mamba is actually brown - just a bit of trivia for you all.

November 21
Arrived in Namibia this afternoon. The temperature at 1500 was 48 degrees.
I suspect it will only get hotter as we travel north into the Namib and the Kalahari desert.

Cheers and best wishes, Christine