The travels of Tim and Megan: Africa Safari: South Africa

Day 54: Travel to Orange River, South Africa

We woke to a beautiful sunny morning, our last in Namibia. We got up at 6.10am and had brilliant showers - probably the best of the whole tour. We packed up our gear and had a great breakfast of cornflakes, followed by bacon and eggs. We departed the Canyon Roadhouse camp at 7.45am and drove south towards the border with South Africa.

Once again we were treated to beautiful landscape of rocky mountains and blue sky as we drove. Just before 10am, we stopped for diesel and spent our remaining Namibian Dollars on snacks and drinks. Shortly after, we crossed the border into South Africa, the 60th country for Tim and Bear!

South Africa is, unsurprisingly, located at the southern tip of Africa and has coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. South Africa is bordered by Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe to the north and Mozambique and Swaziland to the east, while Lesotho is an enclave surrounded by South African territory. South Africa is multi-ethnic with many cultures and languages. Eleven official languages are recognised. South Africa has a population of more than 50 million people.

South Africa is ranked as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank, one of only four countries in Africa in this category (the others being Botswana, Gabon and Mauritius). It has the largest economy in Africa, and the 28th-largest in the world, yet about a quarter of the population is unemployed and lives on less than US$1.25 a day. South Africa has three capital cities - Cape Town is the legislative capital, Pretoria the executive capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital!

We got some South African Rand from an ATM and then had short drive to the campsite, situated on the northern bank of the Orange River. The Orange River (named after William of Orange in 1779) is the longest river in South Africa, stretching from the Drakensberg Mountains in Lesotho and flowing westwards across South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. It forms part of the border between Namibia and South Africa. From our camp, we could easily see Namibia across the other side of the river, probably only 80-odd metres away.

It was a very relaxed afternoon. We had lunch and then chilled out on the lawn, playing with an old rugby ball, until the camp owner's dog got hold of it and popped it! It was a good chance to catch up on some washing and charging and for Tim to have a shave! Later in the afternoon, Megs had a swim in the Orange River, although she didn't venture as far as Troy and Simon, who swam right across the river to Namibia (illegal border crossing) and were followed by the dog!

In the evening we had a few drinks in the bar, looking out over the Orange River and then we had beef stew and pasta for dinner around the camp fire. We went to bed about 9.30pm, as we had an early start coming up. It did not help that the camp dog howled throughout the night, right outside out tents...

Day 55: Cederberg

On Thursday we got up early, showered, packed up, had breakfast and left camp before 7am. We heard the hilarious news that Crystal Palace had knocked Man United out of the Carling Cup at Old Trafford! We drove south through fairly boring scenery - just rocky hills and nothingness, but at least the roads were sealed. At about 8.30am, we stopped in a small town called Springbok and visited a "Super Spar", an amazing and large supermarket where we purchased drinks, snacks and a replacement rugby ball for Freddy.

We carried on driving south and filled in the time sleeping, listening to some tunes and eating. We stopped again at a truck stop (not very scenic) for a lunch of meatball burgers and salad. After eating, we played around with the new rugby ball and were joined by a few young kids, who had some pretty good skills. A short drive after lunch saw us reach our destination for the day, a lovely camping ground called "Highlander" in the Cederberg wine growing region, almost 300km north of Cape Town.

Our camp, owned and operated by a Scottish family, was built on a hill overlooking a huge vineyard. At the top was a swimming pool and a brilliant bar with an outdoor courtyard area. We unpacked and got all set up for the night and then hung out by the swimming pool. It was a glorious hot and sunny afternoon. One of the guys in our group saw a snake near the path to the bar, but we didn't see it.

At 4.30pm, we gathered at the courtyard outside the bar for a wine tasting. We tasted seven different wines (all made by the owners of the vineyard from grapes grown locally) - two whites, two reds, a sparkling wine, a rose, and a fortified wine. The whites were not that great, but the rest were nice and we especially liked the fortified wine. The guy who took us for the wine tasting was one of the owners - he was very funny and he really knew his stuff. Great Scottish accent too!

We rounded off a pretty solid day with soup followed by fried chicken, corn on the cob and bread for dinner. Then there was custard for dessert. Delicious. Some of the group went back up to the bar after dinner, but we were pretty tired so we called it a night. Tomorrow...Cape Town!

Day 56: Cape Town

It sure felt good to get up and pack up our tent for the very last time on Friday morning. From now on, we would have the luxury of sleeping on a bed, inside some form of building! Bonus. We got up at 5.10am and had an amazing shower (such good water pressure), before enjoying pancakes for breakfast. We left the camp at 7am and headed for Cape Town!

Unfortunately, we had to sit next to the weird old guys on the truck and they both stunk horribly! Every time they moved, we caught a waft of their stench and, as our luck would have it, they moved a lot. They seemed very interested in pointing to things out of our window, reaching across us, pointing and waving and then trying to take photos. Not cool people - why can't you wash?!

It was a four-hour drive to Cape Town, with a short toilet break in the middle. We got a spectacular view of Cape Town's famous Table Mountain as we approached the city. Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa (after Johannesburg) with a touch under 4 million people. The city is famous for its re-developed harbour area and such well-known landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is also Africa's most popular tourist destination.

We arrived in Cape Town around 11am and the truck went straight to the hostel in the city centre. We had decided not to stay in the hostel for Friday night and to move straight into our hotel a day earlier (much easier than moving a day later and also no chance of having to share a room with stinky people). So after a briefing on Cape Town, we caught a taxi the short distance to the Holiday Inn Express where we checked in and were delighted when we saw the comfortable bed and the new, clean bathroom with a good shower, a proper toilet and no wild animals anywhere to be seen!

Once settled in, we wandered down the street to the post office to get some packing materials for the wooden frame we would post back to New Zealand, and then we grabbed some lunch. Tim was again lured in by the Colonel. After lunch, we walked down to the V&A Waterfront, via the Greenmarket, an open market packed with stalls selling beautiful souvenirs and crafts. It was a decent walk to the waterfront and while it was a warm and sunny day, it was very windy. There was a bit of cloud around, including a thick blanket of cloud stuck on the top of Table Mountain (known to locals as "the table cloth").

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront (Alfred being Victoria's second son who began the development of the waterfront in 1860) in the historic heart of Cape Town's working harbour is South Africa's most-visited destination, having the highest rate of foreign tourists of any attraction in the country. Situated between Robben Island and Table Mountain and set against a backdrop of sea and mountain views, it offers a variety of shopping and entertainment options to visitors.

There were loads of people down at the waterfront and lots of really cool shops. We bought some presents for people back home at some souvenir shops and we ambled around the huge shopping mall, checking out some of the hundreds of shops. Our legs got tired late in the afternoon, so we caught a taxi back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. We had a farewell to the tour dinner at a restaurant called Mama Africa's in the city centre. We met the others down there at 7.30pm and had a beautiful dinner (Tim had wart hog and Megs had prawns). They had a band playing traditional African music in the restaurant, which was quite cool.

After dinner, we moved down the road to an Irish pub (there's always an Irish pub), where we had a couple of drinks with the tour group before saying our goodbyes to those we would not see again. There were a few strange characters in the pub - be aware at all times of strange British men sneaking up behind you... We walked back to our hotel and felt very safe. Cape Town is much safer than other African cities and the city centre was well lit and there were plenty of people around. It had been another big day and we were knackered.

Day 57: Cape Town

Saturday 3 December officially signalled the end of our 57-day African safari, although it effectively ended the night before, as nothing was planned for Saturday. We were on our own! We woke feeling refreshed on Saturday morning after a magnificent sleep in an amazingly comfortable bed. Our stupid body clocks made us wake at 5.30am, but we went back to sleep for another 2.5 hours before getting up.

We had the most perfect buffet breakfast ever in the hotel (we're talking bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, hash browns, pastries, muffins, fresh fruit, yogurt, cereal, juice, coffee, tea, and a partridge in a pear tree). We left the hotel at 10am and headed down to the V&A Waterfront again. We had decided to take the ferry out to Robben Island.

Robben Island is about 3km long and 2 km wide and is situated about 7km off the coast of Cape Town. Robben Island is best known as being home to a political prison where Nelson Mandela and other prominent black South Africans were imprisoned for anti-apartheid protesting. Our ferry ride took about half an hour and the sea was quite choppy. It is a notoriously cold and often rough stretch of water between Robben Island, which, coupled with the threat of sharks, made it almost impossible to escape from the island prison.

On arrival at the island, we hopped off the ferry and hopped on to a bus that took us on a tour of the island. We had a very informative tour guide on the bus and we learned that, aside from housing political prisoners, Robben Island had also be used a leper colony from the 1840s, an animal quarantine station and a fortification and armoury during WWII. Our bus tour took us past the leper cemetery, a couple of churches, a small isolation prison building where Robert Sobukwe was imprisoned and the limestone quarry where the prisoners were forced to break stones in appalling conditions. At one end of the island, we got a spectacular view across the water to Cape Town and Table Mountain.

We then got dropped off at the maximum security prison buildings, which is where Mandela and many other political prisoners were held. A former Robben Island prisoner gave us a tour of the prison buildings, which included the very cell where Nelson Mandela was held for so many years, the main exercise yard and a large dormitory where less "dangerous" prisoners were housed. Mandela served 27 years in prison, many of them on Robben Island. Current South African president, Jacob Zuma, also spent time in prison at Robben Island.

It was a pretty moving experience wandering around the prison buildings and Robben Island in general. So many people spent the best part of their lives locked up there for speaking out against the horrid apartheid regime and fighting for equality. The ferry ride back to the mainland was very rough. The wind had really picked up and the sea was rough, so we were getting tossed about a lot.

Back on dry land, we had some lunch in the food court at the V&A Waterfront and then looked around a craft market and some more shops, where Megs bought a book and some other treasures. There is a really nice German beer bar at the waterfront, so we popped in there and enjoyed a wheat beer in the sunshine, before walking back to our hotel. The cloud had almost cleared from the top of Table Mountain, providing superb views of the mountain with glorious blue sky as a backdrop.

At the hotel we watched a bit of Arsenal's 4-0 romp over Wigan and then we got ready to go out for dinner. We wandered back down to Long Street (one of Cape Town's most famous streets - full of bars, restaurants, cafes, quirky shops, hostels and crawling with tourists), where we met Tory, Sara, Little Anzac, Terry and Roselin. We opted to go to a nice little pizza place, where we had fantastic food at cheap prices.

It was sad saying goodbye to the "A Team" - we had been together right from the very start of our African adventure at the Masai Mara bolt-on and we had been living in each other's pockets for two months. We had all enjoyed each other's company and the "A Team" really had enhanced the experience for us.

Sunday: Cape Town

On Sunday we had a bit of a sleep-in and another amazing buffet breakfast in the hotel. Great start to the day. At 10am we caught a taxi to the base of Table Mountain. It was a perfect day weather wise - it was sunny, scorching hot, no cloud and no wind! If it is too cloudy, you don't want to go up the mountain because you won't be able to see anything and if it is too windy, they close the cable car and you cannot get up the mountain.

Being such a glorious day, everyone had the same idea, so we had to queue for well over an hour to buy tickets and get on the cable car. It was a good ride up the mountain - the cable car actually rotates 360 degrees while it ascends and descends, so you get awesome views as you go. At the top, we got a cold drink at the cafe and then wandered around the top of the mountain, checking out the superb views on all sides. From one side is obviously the view down to the centre of Cape Town, known as the City Bowl, with Robben Island in the background. Around the other side you can see beautiful beaches and rugged mountains. Needless to say, we took plenty of photos!

Table Mountain has an unusually rich biodiversity. There are an estimated 2,200 species of plants that are confined to Table Mountain, more than in the whole of the United Kingdom. While we were up the mountain we ran into Terry and Roselin, who had been walking all over the mountain top for hours, and also Darren and Gemma, another couple from our tour. Small world! The view from the top really was breath-taking.

We took the cable car back down the mountain and then got a taxi across town to the V&A Waterfront, where we had thai for lunch. It was amazing. After lunch we did some more Christmas shopping and took some stunning photos of the waterfront area with Table Mountain in the background. It really was a brilliant day. We walked back to our hotel and had a rest and cooled down a bit. We finished off the last of our vodka, watched some football, loaded some photos to the memory stick (we took 2,278 photos in Africa after editing out the bad ones)!

In the evening we went to Spur for dinner. Spur is a chain restaurant throughout southern Africa - kinda like Lone Star - big servings and pretty good prices. The food was magnificent. We had buffalo wings to share and then Tim had ribs (lots of ribs) and Megs had calamari and fish. They were huge servings. The city was crowded - it was the official switching on of the Christmas lights and every man and his dog had turned up to watch. It was pretty cool.

Monday: Cape Town to Johannesburg

On Tuesday we had a big sleep in followed by a perfect breakfast at the hotel. Monday was to be a very relaxing day. After breakfast we finished sorting out our stuff and packing our bags, then we showered and checked out of the hotel. We did a spot of internet in the hotel lobby and posted our wooden frame home at the post office. We then ambled about the market stalls and shops on Long Street. There is a really cool place called the African Womens' Market on Long Street, where we bought a few bits and pieces from the friendly women working there.

We had lunch at Mr Pickwick's - a fantastic and somewhat famous cafe on Long Street - and it was amazing. Tim had the best and biggest vanilla milkshake that has ever graced the face of this fine planet. But it didn't stop there. Tim also had a beef and cheese burger with fried eggs in it. Just everyone pause for a moment and think about how awesome that is. Megs had a vege burger which was also awesome, but didn't have beef or eggs in it. We got superb service and spectacular food. If you're ever in Cape Town, go there. At least once.

After lunch we had a very leisurely wander through the city centre, looked at a few more shops and bought an African wildlife photo book, before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags. We hopped in a taxi bound for the airport at about 4.30pm. Traffic was heavy and it took a long time to get out to the airport. We had a decent two-hour flight to South Africa's largest and most dangerous city, Johannesburg. We arrived at Johannesburg airport after dark and got picked up by a shuttle and taken to our hotel (which was actually an airport hotel, situated right next to the airport).

Even on the short drive to the hotel, we passed a lot of scary looking people. We pulled up at the hotel and an armed security guard opened the huge gate to let our shuttle in. Hard core security. The hotel was a little different, but we locked ourselves in and had a good night's sleep.

Tuesday: Farewell to Africa

On Tuesday we slept in and had a fairly good breakfast at the slightly strange hotel (nothing could compare to the Holiday Inn Express Cape Town buffet breakfast). It was a hot morning. We showered and packed our bags and then headed back to the airport. We got there very early but we were allowed to check in. Thank goodness for the Star Alliance gold card - we got priority check-in, extra luggage allowance and we got to hang out in the airport lounge for a couple of hours before the flight.

We were leaving behind our African safari, one of the most amazing adventures we will ever experience in our lives. We had visited 10 countries in 62 days. We had travelled over 13,000km, mainly in a big old cumbersome truck. We had seen some of the most spectacular things on the planet. And we had met some truly lovely people. But now we were leaving Africa and heading to Asia. It was sad to say goodbye to Africa. It is a special place. Those who have been there will know what we mean. It is magical. It is unique. It is special.

Our flight to Singapore was actually not too bad. We departed Johannesburg at 2.35pm and about 10 hours later, we arrived in Singapore bright and early at 7.05am Wednesday (Singapore time).

Country tally:
Megs: 63
Tim: 60
Bear: 60