Getting on the truck

Joined the group yesterday evening. 20 pax mainly from Europe and Canada. 2 danes - that's us - 1 girl from Finland, a handfull of germans, a couple from Switzerland. Age ranging from early 20's to the 70's. Good mix but a larger group than usually. Got the paperwork in place last night, packing the last stuff.

Got up 6 in the morning, breakfast, luggage to the truck, hotel check out and departure at 6:55. Heading towards the Namibian border, leaving Cape Town in the early dawn. Realised that being in the back of a truck is some kind of bumpy experience. Good that the trip today is only ~600 km.
Driving north through South Africa's monotonous stony, dry western coast was a good opportunity to get some sleep. A hill, a valley, a small dusty collection of houses not big enough to be labeled a town or anything. Perhaps just a dot on some map. Once in a while looking at the country side only to realise that it was more or less the same. And the same. And the same.  Had a small stopover to supply us with water and other praticalities for the next couple of days in a small town.
Arrived at the camp site @ 18:00. Right next to the river bank. A fairly large place. Spent 10 minutes with the guides about the practicalities, how to put up tents. How to avoid getting extra bedfellows into the tent at night, how to avoid getting bitten/stung by something when taking down the tent in the morning etc.

Barbequed pork and other good stuff for dinner. Very nice. Went to "bed" early. Listening to the horny frogs at the river bank calling for some female company.  Fell asleep feeling a bit dizzy after 11 hours on the road. Tomorrow is going to be a lot less driving.

Cape town city crusing

Woke up and went back to sleep at 8. Repeated the exercise 3 times before house keeping knocked on the door. Asked her to come back later and enjoyed the monday morning with Malene in bed not having to hurry for anything.
Realising that it wasn't worth the money (500 R each) or time to try to make it to the tip of the cape we decided to catch the hop on/hop off bus again. Went down to the stop and had a lovely ride in the opposite direction of yesterday. Got of at the  Imizano Yethu township and spent the next 45 minutes with a very nice and enthusiastic guide who took us through the worst slum imaginable. Cant stop to wonder how it must be during the hot months. But as always - when you see places like that anywhere in the world - people look happy, well dressed and remarkably clean. Got on the bus again and drove for something like 20 minutes before we got off again - just being informed that the neighbourhood we were entering had some of the highest real estate prices in the southern part of Africa - up to 55 million R. The world is so full of contrasts.
If I ever were to set up a business here in the southern part of Africa I would trade barbed wire. There is so much being used for fencing .... everything. People's houses, properties, public areas, not so public areas. Give it a good fence with barbed wire no matter what it is. Just to be on the safe side. That would be my business. :-)
Spent the afternoon close to harbour doing our last minute shopping of practical stuff for the trip which is supposed to start early tomorrow. It's going to be interesting.

Africa, day 1

Arrived in Cape Town on a fantastic morning. Clear, sunny and calm. Got our luggage in 5 minutes and got a taxi to the hotel. Funny driver talking all the way from the airport to the hotel. Almost no traffic - sunday morning. Got a nice room at the hotel, left the luggage and went on tour with the hop on/hop off bus.

Sitting on the open top deck of the bus we had an excellent view of the town as we drove towards table mountain cable car - that turned out to be closed due to maintenance. So instead we took a short hike up the mountain for 20 minutes just to get a better view of Cape Town and to stretch the legs after 11 hours in the plane. Lovely. We hiked back to the bus and went to the harbour to catch our prebooked tour to Robben Island. That was amazing. After some 30 minutes of sailing on a small ferry we landed at the island, boarded the bus and had a 30 minute drive around the island before being guided through the prison by an ex-political prisoner. He was really good at making the tour something special.

Coming back to the harbour we found a nice place to sit and have a late afternoon beer in the sun before going into the mall and finding some food for the dinner. Back at the hotel we just crashed to bed. What an excellent first day.

On the road

Well. We managed to leave Denmark - but what a rush.
All morning busy busy doing the last pratical stuff, and the list just didn't seem to end. Left the appartment in a very nice shape at 12:30. Malenes sister was very kind to give us a ride to the airport - thanks.

And then it turned out that due to "big-cruise-ship"-switching day the airport was jammed with people trying to leave the country. So realising there was around 5 minutes until the gate closed and still being in the security queue we made a quick decision and jumped the queue.

The gate closed at 14:45 - we were there at 14:43.

Now hanging out in the BA lounge having a light meal and something to drink - relaxing for the first time in three weeks.

We're on the road, in fairly good shape. It will surely be nice to get a good nights sleep. 12 hours flight to Cape Town leaving in a couple of hours.

Stay tuned for the next update.

:-)  M&M

Velkommen til rejsebloggen

Så er det dagen før afgang.

Bloggen er oprettet - så er der kun 49 ting tilbage på listen inden vi smutter imorgen, lørdag.

Stay tuned

M&M