Coming home

We're home now, back to work and back to real life, but I figured I should wrap up the blog.

Our last full day in Cape Town, we went back into town to do a little more sightseeing and souvenir buying. We stopped into the Turkish Baths, but they didn't seem as nice as I remember from Istanbul, so we didn't go in.

We went back to the Pan African market, the indoor stalls from before. UG looked at more masks. There was one vendor UG liked before who told the story of the various masks he sells, so we went back to him. UG looked at several masks and the vendor kept asking which one he wanted to know the price on. Finally UG picked one and asked the price. When the vendor said 2800 ZAR (about $400), UG almost collapsed. But he wouldn't let us leave without making a sale. So UG told him all he had left was 500 ZAR. I believed him, so I said he wasn't allowed to spend the full 500, because *I* still had shopping to do, and I was out of cash. So they agreed to 300 ZAR. Sshhh, big secret, we're not supposed to tell anyone what a huge deal we got.

I still believed UG only had 200 ZAR left, so I didn't end up buying anything. Well, that and on closer inspection of the hippo I liked, the dark colour was created with shoe polish, not from ebony wood like the seller claimed.

It was wonderfully hot out, so we hurried back to Simon's Town to head to the beach. But by the time we got back, the wind was blowing, clouds were coming in and the water was cold.

That evening, I had to log into the airline website and pre-pay for my extra luggage for a 50% discount, for the domestic flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. I decided to err on the high side, and purchased 15 kilograms, way, way, way more than I thought I would need.

On Wednesday, home day, we woke up to absolutely the best weather in Simon's Town of the entire stay. It made packing up very difficult. We went out to pick up my souvenir wine and liqueur. UG was also looking for a South African lock set, since most locks we encountered used these weird, antique style keys. But the locks were brand new. So we hit up several hardware stores looking for locks. No idea what we're going to install the locks on, but it was fun exploring African hardware stores. It turns out the little place that reminded us of Totem (or Beaver Lumber for the Ontario crowd) was actually their equivalent of Lowes. The shops got smaller and scarier from there. I am glad I don't have a house that needs renovations in Africa.

With all our loot, and still a few more hours of vacation and nice weather, we tried again to go to the beach. This time we made it in up to our knees. It wasn't "quite" as cold as Long Beach on Vancouver Island, but definitely not as warm as up near Durban or Saint Lucia. Back at the apartment, we took a quick dip in the pool and let our suits dry while we finished packing.

Once we got everything packed up, with the help of UG's travel scale (also used for weighing bike parts at home), we weighed the bags to ensure no one bag was too heavy. It turns out I had a little over 14kg more stuff than the basic domestic allowance. Good thing I got the 15 kilos. I guess UG can be right once in a while.

Over the course of our stay in Cape Town, we saw oodles of old Volkswagen Beetles. UG is a big fan, he has owned 2, and we still play "punch buggy". We also play "stumpy" when crossing railways. Neither of us has ever been accused of being too mature. In case you are too mature to know the game, if you see a 70s or earlier model of VW Beetle, you punch the person next to you and say "punch buggy (insert colour of the car), no punch backs!" Anyway, with all the Bugs in the Cape Town area, we had a great time playing "punch buggy". Typically, UG gets me more than I get him, he seems to have a radar for them. But even I was able to get a few, there were so many of them. On the way to the airport, we saw 5 Beetles, I got him on all of them. It was probably a good time to be leaving, as we were both starting to get bruises from the game.

On the flight, we had a young South African guy sitting between us. He was chatty and wanted to hear all about our trip and tell us about his country. The first thing he asked us was "did you get mugged?" He was an interesting guy, so excited to be going to J'burg on his first business trip, his first time in a fancy hotel.

Our flight was 45 minutes delayed, fortunately I gave us a 3h window in Johannesburg. And the airline wouldn't check our bags through from Cape Town, despite insistence on the Trip Advisor forums that they would. So we had to find them and haul them across the airport ourselves. For some odd reason, the airport staff would not let people take their carts into the airline check-in line. Everyone had to unload all their stuff at the end of the line, and maneuver it up through the line to the front. I made the line move especially slow, and left a bad last memory of South Africa.

By the time we got through security and found the gate, we had about 20 minutes to spare. Good thing I didn't take the "experts" advice on Trip Advisor and only leave a 1 hour window!

About 26 hours later, we arrived home, tired. But happy to not see snow on the ground.

Sharks, round 2

Saturday I "dragged" UG for a drive around the wine region. To get there, we followed a pretty coastal road, then passed a massive "township" (aka: shanty-town), almost immediately followed by vineyards.

We started with a stop at the visitor centre in Stellenbosch, which turns out to be the oldest European village in South Africa. The woman there got on a tangent about social issues in South Africa, which led to comments about all the young people of South Africa moving overseas, mostly to Australia. The downside of Australia, according to her, is how regimented life is there, all those rules! Apparently in South Africa, you can do whatever you want. That explains the driving!

But she also provided some helpful maps and suggestions of places to stop. I was expecting a "wine route", a loop of some sort that drives past the majority of the vineyards. But it turns out ALL the roads in the region have multiple wineries on them. There seems to be at least 10 times as many wineries as the Niagra or Okanagan regions. Some of them aren't even on the winery tour map. We stopped at a relatively new winery with impressive gardens and modern restaurants, then very old one with a quiet outdoor cafe under the oak trees (with homemade lemonade and lemon meringue pie!).

We then passed a tourist trap of a shop, with large, ugly, multicoloured metal art decorating their front yard. As we have a weakness for tacky tourist traps, we had to stop (have YOU had your photo taken with the world's largest mango?). The front half of the shop is basically a country grocery store. The back half is a discount wine liquidation warehouse. There were bottles of wine for about $2 CDN. I was tempted to load up, but what if it wasn't good? If I bought 2 bottles so I could try one before going home, it was no longer such a good deal. The decision was made when I realized I didn't really want to fight the crowds. UG compared the experience to an underwear sale at Army & Navy (a slightly less upscale store than Giant Tiger for you Easterners), old ladies going crazy and buying everything in sight. There was one giddy woman pushing her cart loaded with possibly 50 bottles of wine.



We then stopped at a couple more wineries with good scenery (no tasting for me, as UG did not appear to be in the mood to wait for me to try the thousands of wine on offer) and then headed home.

By Saturday evening, UG had recovered from his seasickness, and picked up some drugs from the pharmacy to take on the next attempt at shark cage diving, but Sunday's trip was full. Apparently they had been trying to call us all day to see if we still wanted to go, but either they were trying to call our Calgary phone number, or we're the victims of yet more South African cell network issues. But they were able to book us in for Monday.

Sunday turned out to be the best day in Cape Town, weather wise (up to 34C and sunny in Cape Town proper). We drove into town and wandered around the V&A Waterfront (Victoria and Alfred, named for Queen Vicki and her son, not her husband Albert). This is a cleaned up for tourists version of the 19th-20th century harbour front. It's a large collection of malls, tourist gift shops, restaurants and harbour cruise boat operators. There are also live musical acts and a ferris wheel. After arriving and then spending about 45 minutes looking for a bathroom we sat down at a restaurant with a shaded, waterside patio. Unfortunately, it seems like 85% of South Africans smoke, and restaurants here have never considered non-smoking areas. So while we waited almost 2 hours to order, eat, get the bill and pay, we were completely engulfed in cigarette smoke.

We then headed back to Simon's Town with the intent of hitting the beach. But everyone else in the city was out enjoying the weather, so we hit a traffic jam on the scenic coastal road. By the time we got back to the apartment to change into bathing suits, we had only about an hour of sun left. So we suited up and enjoyed our private pool instead.

This morning, we woke up early to a clear, calm and warm (although still dark) day. While eating breakfast and preparing to go on another shark tour, suddenly the wind blew in, as if someone turned on the wind switch on our movie set. UG pulled up his email and was told that the trip may be cancelled, and that they were trying to call us again. Apparently there are a lot of messages waiting for us back in Calgary. A few minutes later, we got another message that the trip was to be delayed by an hour. When we eventually arrived at the boat, everyone else was already onboard, as they were all staying in Cape Town or on the Atlantic coast, a 45min drive away, so they were all already on their way to the boat when they heard of the delay, so they had to wait on the pier instead of a couch like us. I am very happy to have chosen this spot.



A shark breached in front of the boat before we even got to the island and dropped our decoy to instigate a breach. Of course, UG and I missed it as we were riding in the nice warm cabin, instead of up on the cold, windy viewing deck. Once the decoy was dropped, I got probably 30 minutes of video of a rubber seal bobbing through the waves. But no sharks.

As we were getting ready to drop the anchor, our captain pointed out a seal swimming by himself and told us to watch him. He had a feeling, based on the activity we had seen, and the fact that the seal was all alone. I video'd this poor lonely seal until he passed the boat and I could no longer see him. That was the point when he met his fate and was snapped up by a shark jumping out of the water. Luckily, UG saw it through the front window of the boat cabin, and another guest from the top viewing deck got a photo. I then got video of the shark flailing around and finishing the seal off.

UG decided not to be the first to suit up in anticipation of getting in the cage, since the wetsuit was uncomfortable, so 2 other guys went first. While they were in the cage, the largest shark of the day grabbed the bait line in front of the cage, got it caught on his teeth, and slammed into the cage in the process of getting away. This shark was about twice the size of the guy that rattled UG's cage on Friday. And both guys in the cage saw it, since it happened in front of them (as opposed to behind like UG's experience). There were at least 2 more sharks who came by the boat while these guys were in the cage. Eventually UG decided to get in, but the activity seemed to be done by then.

Back on shore, we went for lunch with a couple of the other guests who have just arrived in SA from Oregon. And just as we arrived back at the apartment, it started to rain.

We now have less than 48 hours until we leave to head back to Calgary. On one hand, I am looking forward to seeing my dog and sleeping in my own bed. On the other, it doesn't seem to have stopped snowing in Calgary.