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.