Although we had originally booked a direct flight from London to Cape Town, we’d since been rerouted via Johannesburg where we landed at about 10am after a long 11 hour flight. We’ll be seeing a lot of this airport over the next the best pharmacy store few weeks, and we found a nice cafe (Mugg and Bean) that we’re hoping to frequent again at some point! There was just enough time for a quick lunch before catching the second leg of our flight. Apparently Cape Town is one of the windiest cities in the world and this made for a very bumpy descent, during which there was some screaming amongst the passengers! We’ll be landing there again in just over 2 weeks’ time when we’ll be staying in the area, but today we simply collected our hire car – a VW Polo Sedan with just 400km on the clock – and headed east on the N2 motorway.
For the first 5km or so, the road is lined either side with shanty towns. This came as quite a stark contrast to the comparatively wealthy feel of the airport and surrounding area and was our first insight into the divide between rich and poor. The traffic was fairly slow moving, giving market sellers plenty of opportunity to walk between cars selling everything from car chargers to hats and sunglasses. The windy conditions that we encountered on the flight also made driving quite interesting as we left the outskirts of the city and started winding through the mountain roads.
After a few hours we arrived at Hermanus (a small coastal town) and the Baleens Guest House where we’d planned to spend our first night in South Africa. We headed back into town as the sun was setting and enjoyed some cocktails on the seafront before dinner. The very friendly staff at Baleens recommended Lemon Butta – a lovely seafood restaurant which also has excellent vegetarian sushi! The food is very inexpensive in South Africa – a two course meal for three of us in a fairly upmarket restaurant with wine and Irish coffees came to 660 Rand, which is about £45.
After dinner we walked back to the car park and tipped our car guard – people who look after your car for you while it’s parked – and headed back to Baleens for a much needed night’s sleep.
Great idea Howard; I shall look forward to reading the rest of the blogs.
Have you seen any whales in Hermanus? It may not be the season for them but that is the place to see whales – we did when we were there some 8-10 years ago in March.
Ha! Irish coffees…trust you lot!
It was shammy’s fault…!