The Beginning, Cape Town

Arriving in Cape Town we were advised by both our Uber driver and hotel receptionist that we should not walk around at night, an ominous way to begin our journey, although ultimately accurate.

The first journey to tick off the list was a ferry to Robben Island, however this was so full that we would have to wait until the afternoon to travel across. To fill the time we decided to use the red city sightseeing bus, stopping at Table Mountain and Camps Bay. Whilst at Camps Bay we took a cold paddle in the ocean and saw the beginnings of a fire near to the 12 apostles. This fire would grow throughout our time in Cape Town, eventually requiring helicopters and the services of 150 firemen to prevent it spreading further.

In true African fashion we saw a man loading a lorry with crates of beer by throwing them from the floor up to his friend at the top. His colleague then topped this throwing 8 crates in half a minute all while dancing in the middle of the road.

Robben Island was a remarkable experience with our tour guide Sipho Msomi, a former prison inmate with Nelson Mandela. Sipho informed us of the levels of discrimination even in prison, with different ethnicities receiving different foods. We concluded the tour with a view of Mandela’s cell and completed our own ‘Walk to freedom’ back to the ferry.

On the ferry back to mainland we saw two Southern Right Whales mating and a shark. Seals and penguins rounded off our list of animals seen.

V&A waterfront is the tourist face of Cape Town and has many restaurants and shops along with a Snake Mobile Home. It was in this caravan that we were advised we would be fortunate to see a snake during our camping trip but that we would see many scorpions and spiders. You can imagine the look on Cara’s face.

Two early morning trips to Gansbaii for Cage Diving yielded no sightings of Great Whites however we did see a sting ray and several whales, including one breaching (to jump out of the water - not anything to do with pregnancy as Cara first thought).

The first attempt to go up Table Mountain failed as a result of heavy winds and the second attempt involved queues of 2 hours each way. The staff very kindly stayed behind to ensure all customers were able to ascend and descend. The views were well worth the wait, as can be seen in the photos and we were able to get a bird’s eye view of the fire seen previously at Camps Bay.

On the way up to Table Mountain the cable car floor rotates slowly to ensure all customers get an even view of the mountain, city and sea. One man did not seem to get this message and continued to hold on to the side railing which did not move with the floor. It was like ten pin bowling seeing this man knocking people out of the way whilst he tried to remain in one place, not to mention the open windows he was pushing people towards. Very very amusing to us both.

On our final day in Cape Town we had a tour of Cape Point Route beginning with Hoek Bay. Our first stop saw us bump into some Norwegian nursing students that we had met the previous day on our trip to Gansbaii. One of these girls had just been mugged at knifepoint in the middle of the beach at 10am! Fortunately she had not been hurt. Eventually brushing this off we had our photos taken with a wild seal that was stood with a man feeding him fish.

The Cape of Good Hope is the most south western point of South Africa and provided a photo opportunity with some Ostrich and a sign with details of the area. A common myth about the Cape of Good Hope is that this is the point where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet but this has been proven not to be the case.

A visit to the tallest lighthouse in South Africa that was ironically never used as it was always masked in fog, saw our first encounter with baboons. These cheeky critters jumped on a woman’s head as she left the cable car knocking her over.

Continuing the tour we visited Simons Town and Boulders Beach where we saw penguins playing and Cara tried to imitate the penguin waddle. We also saw a Hyrax which looks like a Beaver but surprisingly whose closest relative is the elephant.

Our tour concluded with a visit to the botanical gardens. Some of the trees here existed at the same time as the dinosaurs and are worth thousands of Rand. As a consequence one of the trees had recently been stolen, given that the trees must weigh upwards of 200kg I cannot help but think this was an inside job.

Our fellow passengers on the Cape Point Route were two republicans and two democrats. Within half an hour of the journey they were disagreeing over Trump and whether Global Warming truly existed. This made for very interesting lunch conversation.

Arriving at our hostel for the start of our tour there was a Safari Truck parked outside that would not have been out of place in Iraq. This was to be our mobile home for the next 43 days.

Joe Dunleavy