Cape Town

Cape Town, the big city. It was to function as a stepping stone to getting back to life in London again, and it certainly had a "ryssat anttilassa" effect on us (sorry not appropriate to translate word-by-word into english, but let's just say we got a bit excited in a supermarket on our first night in CT... "salad! cheese! rye crackers!")

We booked into Ashanti and reserved a triple room, so it was quite luxurious. (Ashanti is a GREAT hostel by the way, definitely recommended!! Great for the slightly older traveller, meaning they have a separate guesthouse with private rooms that are huge, very clean, lovely decor and very quiet.)

It's the winter now in Southern Africa, and we’d heard lots of horror stories about the winter weather in Cape Town. Apparently it rains pretty much all the time and it can get really miserable. However the luck was for once on our side and our first morning here started with beautiful sunshine and a clear sky. Perfect day to visit the Table Mountain! We got a cab to the cable car and while Minna and Kaisa joined the queue I went to enquire about a map at the info centre. They didn’t have any maps, but the girl working there somehow managed to convince me that it would be a much better idea to walk up rather than take the cable car: “Only about one and half hours walk”. So up we walked. Except for it wasn’t a one and a half hours walk, but almost a three-hour hard-core climb, at times on all fours. We practically speaking died several times (apart from our marathon-runner Kaisa), it was so bad. The only thing that kept us going was the thought of re-visiting the info centre once down, so we could strangle the girl working there. We were so not prepared for the hike and had hardly any water with us. I drank from a stream coming down the hill hoping that it wasn’t the drain from the restaurant at the top, it got so desperate. But believe it or not, we made it to the top, where we corked a bottle of bubbly Kaisa had kindly carried in her backpack all the way there. Yes, it tasted great! (Afterwards we found a long list of equipment in our guide books recommended for the Table Mountain hike, including torches and whistles. We only had a bottle of bubbly and three plastic wine glasses…)

The lovely weather held up for the rest of the week and we were able to hire a car and drive down to the Cape of Good Hope and the Cape Point. Driving in South Africa was one thing I’d sworn definitely not to do (too much traffic, not very safe, etc) but renting a car was too cheap to resist, plus the public transport isn’t great. It was fine apart from finding our way out of Cape Town took a very long time. The road we wanted to take was closed and the alternative scenic route simply didn’t exist outside the map but at least we got a very thorough sightseeing tour of the suburbs. We spent the night in Simon’s Town (we never found out who was this Simon, even though we kept asking and asking) which is a cute little coastal town about an hour’s drive south of CT. Penguins also like Simon’s town so much that they live there in their hundreds, so we got to see lots of them. They’re the small jackass ones, really really cute! I managed to kidnap one as it fitted perfectly in my back-pack (ok I didn’t but I really wanted to).

The following day we had the best breakfast in a little patisserie called the Sweetest Thing, please make note of this if you ever end up in Simon’s Town! Mmmmm…. After some more penguin-spotting we drove up the road to Muizenberg where I wasn’t planning to surf at all, no, I just wanted to quickly have a look at the waves. But they were too perfect to give a miss so soon I found myself in the water giving Kaisa her first ever surfing lesson. I hope she caught the bug!

Back in CT that night, we parked our car outside the hostel and headed out for some shopping. The shopping centre (Victoria Wharf) was big and we had a few more ‘ryssat Anttilassa” moments, it was SOOO nice to shop & being able to wear new clothes rather than choose from the five smelly t-shirts I’d been wearing since March. Another beautiful dinner with some beautiful wine and we went to bed knackered, ready to get up early for a Wine Tour in the following morning. As we were waiting to be picked up we had a lovely surprise: During the night a bus had smashed into our rental car and the whole of the driver’s side was damaged and the mirror broken off. Always a nice thing to having to deal with…. But there wasn’t much we could do about it at that moment as the wine was waiting for us.

An all-day wine tour with a guide and a driver was certainly a memorable experience! We visited four different vineyards and tasted 27 different wines, quite generous portions as well. The only problem was that after the fifth one they all just tasted wonderful… Later on that night we met up with some others from the wine tour in Mama Africa (restaurant), and tried a couple of bars in Long Street. We finished off the night by opening one of the bottles of bubbly we’d bought from the vineyard at the hostel porch and reminiscing about the past few weeks. For it was our last night in Africa.

Sunday started off not so great: it was pissing down with rain, we had to pack, visit a police station and sort out the smashed rental car. Very depressing. After some brunch in Lola’s café Minna and Kaisa had to leave to the airport, I still had a couple of hours to kill, so I spent the remaining time wisely by finding the perfect wooden hippo.

I’ve got ten minutes until a taxi is due to pick me up. Don’t want to go, no no no. Maybe the flight will be cancelled due to bad weather? Maybe there will be a high-jack and the plane will be re-directed to Mozambique? Fingers crossed.

The rest of Namibia

We found out that there was an overnight train from Swakopmund to Windhoek and it sounded like a fun way to travel. The only problem was that no-one seemed to know when the train would come, but apparently there definitely was one. (On hindsight, at this point we should have questioned why no locals ever used that train...) The ticket office at the railway station was closed all day Sunday, but the security guard assured us that if we waited long enough, the train would come.

Before that we wanted to say goodbye to our new friends, and got a customised tour around the slums. As we were dropped off at the train station, our guide wanted to have a serious talk with us. Apparently we're way too friendly and trusting, and that we should not under any circumstances befriend any more strangers especially in Windhoek as we wouldn't last very long.

Then we waited for the train. And waited. And waited. At about nine o'clock (after more than two hours' wait) we saw something moving towards us very slowly. It looked like a train, but it moved at a pace of a donkey cart. But in we hopped, and ten and a half hours later we reached Windhoek (a bus takes three hours for the same journey). It wasn't one of the greatest train journeys I've ever been on to be honest, and we didn't feel exactly refreshed when we got to our hostel in Windhoek in the morning.

Windhoek was cold, chaotic and stressful, so we wanted to get out as quickly as possible. We spent the whole day planning our escape, and managed to organise a get-away vehicle for the following day: a one-way car hire. By the following afternoon we were on our way to the desert with our camping equipment (=tent and plastic wine glasses) and some newly bought blankets, socks and fleece pyjamas so we wouldn't freeze to death in the desert.

After the stunning three-hour drive over the mountains we got to a guest farm in Solitaire, which was yes you guessed it, in the middle of nowhere. We pitched our tent, made friends with the farm's pet springbok and prepared a gourmet meal on the fire (tinned rice and vegetables). The night was very windy, but to our amazement the tent didn't blow away. In the morning the pet springbok turned out to be less friendly than in the previous evening and kept attacking us. I had to get help in the end from the farm owners while Kaisa and Minna were hiding in the toilet.

That day we saw the red dunes of Sossusvlei and climbed a few of them. Dunes are cool, but after a while they all look like big piles of sand (which they, let's face it, are) so we didn't stay too long.

Our next destination was Fish River Canyon (approximately a 8-hour drive away - Namibia is a big country!), which is the second biggest canyon in the world after Grand Canyon (I bet you'd never even heard of it before). It was rather big, and very canyon-like. We'd seriously considered doing the five-day, 85-km hike through the canoyn, but in the end chose the 45-minute, 5-km hike instead. It was probably a very wise decision.

After three nights of camping and 1500km later we made it to Luderitz, a small and pretty seaside town near where we had to return the car. On the way we stopped to check out the wild horses of the Namib desert. They only have one waterhole from where to drink, so if you park the car next to it, you’re guaranteed to see some. We saw lots, quite an amazing sight!

We stayed for two nights in the Luderitz backpackers – our last two nights in Namibia.
Luderitz is located next to a top-security diamond mining area, which pretty much consists of the whole southwest corner of Namibia. Close to Luderitz there is a ghost town called Kolmanskop, which was the Namibian diamond centre until the 50s. It’s a strangely beautiful place, looks like a film set with all the empty buildings now taken over by sand dunes, but the "ghost town" aspect was slightly lost in the herds of tourists around.

On Sunday we had to say goodbye to our little VW Golf and hop on Anna’s minibus towards Keetmanshoop, where we were going to catch Intercape bus to Cape Town. It was a slightly different minibus experience to the previous one, where gangsta rap was played on full volume and the driver offered us sips of his beer. This time we hadn’t even left Luderitz, when Anna pulled the bus to the side of the road, and we all had to pray together for a safe journey. In Afrikaas. Sure enough, God delivered us safely to our destination, where we had to wait for another seven hours for the Intercape in a Wimpy.

How does one pass seven hours in a Wimpy, you may wonder. In case anyone else ever finds themselves in a similar situation, I shall share my tips with you. There’s coffee. There’s painting toenails green. Plucking eyebrows. Filing nails. Eating a burger. Painting fingernails green. There’s more coffee. Reading a book. Watching South African teenagers on school trip praying together with Wimpy’s kitchen staff. Calling parents. Finally, once everything else is done, try arranging all your coins from your purse in the order of the year they were made. I was fascinated to find clear patterns in coin production: 1993 was a great year for printing 10 cents and 2002 for 50 cents.

At about midnight, just when I was about to be sent off with the men in white jackets, Intercape came to the rescue and whisked us off to Cape Town. Well, it didn’t happen quite so quickly: The journey took about 16 hours. They have the best bus seats ever, but there’s a price to pay: you’re forced to watch – how could I put it nicely – Christian-themed dramas with a lot of praying onboard.

So there we were, all of a sudden in the big city. Almost three weeks in Namibia had flown by. Wide-eyed, we got off the bus and hopped on a taxi.