Heading to Cape Town

We packed up yesterday morning and headed out from Pietermaritzburg back down to the coast, back to the "beach" resort to pick up my bathing suit.

As we were leaving the resort last week, we saw a public beach about 2 minutes away from the resort, but we hadn't seen anyone swimming at it. And since we didn't realize that we'd be going back to the resort (because if we realized I'd left my bathing suit behind, we would have just turned around then and got it) , or how close we were to the airport, we didn't bother to investigate last week. But yesterday, on the way to the resort, we noticed there were people swimming. After picking up my suit, we had about an hour and a half before we had to be at the airport, which was about 20 minutes away, so I convince UG to stop and let me dip my toes in. He didn't think we had time to change into bathing suits, swim, dry off and get to the airport, so toes was all I could do. So I took off my shoes and socks, rolled my jeans up to my knees, and went down to the edge of the water. Within about a minute, a huge wave came, and soaked me almost to my crotch. But I was wearing my jeans because they were too heavy to pack in my suitcase, and that's when they are dry! So I laid on a bench for a few minutes to get them dry enough that they wouldn't drip on my shoes while UG sulked in the shade because he was so hot and HIS bathing suit was buried in his suitcase, not loose in the back seat of the car like mine. So after a few minutes, we got back in the car and took the long route to the airport.

After dropping off the rental car, we went inside the terminal. We stopped an employee to ask directions to the elevator (packing light is not one of my talents), and he happened to point us to the flight status board where our 1:15 flight was now scheduled to depart at 5:10. And we're there early!

Another 10 minutes later, we're done exploring the brand new Durban airport (King Shaka International, UG loves saying the name and is going to start a petition to change Calgary International to something better sounding, like Chief Chacka International Airport), and we realize there is not enough there to entertain us for 5 hours until we can check in. So we went back to the rental car desk and asked if our car was still there. No, they had already taken it for cleaning. How much for a different car for 4 hours? About $70. Hmm, well, there are 6 other companies, and I got time, so I walked to each one and compared prices. Only 2 actually had cars, so we got one for $60 for a 1 day rental. We considered a taxi, but we didn't know how to explain where we wanted to go, and we didn't know how to get back. $60 was a bargain compared to the resort, and this time I KNEW I'd get to play in some waves.
We were given a Hyundai i10. My theory is that the car isn't big enough to have a name, so they gave it a number. A Toyota Yaris would have been an upgrade, and it still had 4 doors. We folded the back seats down and filled the little jelly bean on wheels with our luggage, and hauled our butts back to the beach.

Back at the beach, UG pointed out that the only people swimming were kids. Was there a reason for that? Um, yes. It turns out the breaking waves were so strong, only 6 year olds have the energy to spend any time in them. In the process of getting past the breaks, I was knocked on my butt a couple of times and sent somersaulting back on shore. I was still dropping pebbles out of my pants when we eventually made it to Cape Town, and I probably should have still been wearing my rash shirt, because keeping the girls covered when you don't know which end is up is a challenge. But I made it past the rough parts and got to bob around in the deeper parts where the waves (mostly) weren't breaking, so weren't as tough to deal with.

We spent about 20 minutes in the water, and then 40 drying off, and then headed back to the airport.

Back at the airport, we got dinner, then went to check in. When we checked in, we were given meal vouchers because of the flight delay. Damn-it, we are so used to the "just be glad we're letting you fly with us" attitude of North American airlines that it never occurred to us there'd be meal vouchers for a 4 hour delay. So we took our vouchers, which were for one restaurant and went to see what they had for dessert. Nothing interesting, so we gave the vouchers to a family that was heading in.
When we finally got to board (at about 5:30), they were handing out 400 Rand airline vouchers to eat passenger (worth about $60 Cdn) as an apology for the delay. These flights only cost us about $90 Cdn to start with.

By the time we got to Cape Town, it was dark, so we didn't see anything from the air. And although the GPS took us on the scenic route to our accomodation, we still didn't get to see much there either.

We're staying in a suburb of Cape Town, on the coast of False Bay in the Indian Ocean. The town is called Simon's Town, and it's a pretty little seaside village. The shark tours leave from here, Cape Point is just down the road, there is a protected penguin colony living across the road, and the beaches are warmer than the Atlantic side (which is important when it's late fall here). We've rented an apartment, since we're staying put for 9 nights. It's an interesting apartment. It's the main floor and back of the second floor of a house. The owners have the front of the second floor and the 3rd floor. It's built onto a steep hill (UG doesn't like the driveway!), and there are spectacular views of the bay from 3 sides of the house. There's even a sweet old husky mix who comes by for a belly rub whenever we go outside (Lula, she belongs to the owners upstairs).

We woke up this morning at about 5am, thanks to a nasty wind and rain storm. I thought some patio furniture was going to come through a window. I guess there's a downside to living high up on the hill. Incidentally, I am shocked, (happily) at the lack of over-the-top security here. There's a front gate, and a door lock. There are large picture windows and sliding glass doors with no bars and only the usual little latch to lock the patio doors. The small windows have bars, I think it's impossible to buy windows without bars in South Africa. The big windows were obviously imported, but they cut costs on the little windows which weren't showing off a view anyway.
After staying in bed to about 8am, we headed out in search of breakfast. UG was starting to be unimpressed with the lack of restaurants in this little town, but we eventually found something, and after we ate, we realized there's a lot here, but nothing opens before 9am.

After breakfast, we went and loaded up on groceries. I spent a while in the wine aisle. I am very impressed at the huge selection of wines available at the grocery store. A full aisle of only South African wines. I bought 3 bottles to sample, at an average price of $5 each.

Back at the apartment, we were being lazy and looking through the brochures of things to do when the owner husband stopped by with a print out of the week's forecast to assure us it's not going to be so cold and windy the whole time we're here. After chatting for a while, we realized he's an avid cyclist. When he heard UG is also into mountain biking and hasn't been able to ride for the last 7 months, he invited him out riding tomorrow morning. (He later had to change plans, as the friends who were going are unavailable due to public holiday, but he still plans to take UG out one day).

He went out to run some errands, and came back 20 minutes later to tell us some whales had been spotted in the bay, close to shore, just 9km up the road. We had no expectations of seeing whales here, since they are only ever seen in the winter. It's extremely rare to see them in the bay in April. We drove up and watched them for about 10 minutes before they swam out too far to watch.

We then went to see the penguins. The owner of the house told us about the boardwalk we can use to see them without paying the fee to the national park, since there's no fences corralling them to a certain location. But we get in free anyway with our park pass, so we went to the main viewing boardwalk. There seemed to be 3 buses of Japanese tourists, plus a few hundred other random tourists, so I think we'll go investigate the free boardwalk another day. But the penguins are worth the trip anyway.

While we were out sightseeing along the waterfront, the wind was much calmer than up at the apartment, but still occasionally gusting. The thermometer read 17C, and the sun was shining and warm. Without the wind, it would have actually been a nice day. Much nicer than the 11C and raining that was predicted. Besides the rain this morning, we got some rain last night. And apparently that's the first rain this town had gotten for 4 months. It's also raining this evening. But at least we got a few hours of sunshine.