Tag 1 - Arrival in Cape Town

Just one day on African soil and already so much experienced. Gentlemen, if this continues, I will come back totally amazed.

The flight was overall quite pleasant, although it was very cramped. 12 hours on those small seats were really torture. Fortunately, we flew overnight and could sleep a lot... Especially after the really well-meant Gin Tonic (50/50) and the glass of Baileys. :-D. But before that, I also made extensive use of the onboard program. First on my priority list was 'The Greatest Showman', from which Sabine quoted a song at the graduation party, and then something light, 'Love, Simon'. And I must say, the first film, which is actually a musical, really blew me away. Damn good music! I am totally in love with the songs. The second film was also good, but, as I said, it was something light. Still nice... And then I fell asleep. Unlike the others, I slept quite soundly. It must have been because of the drinks. After waking up, I had just enough time to watch 'Murder on the Orient Express' before we arrived. A magnificent view, already from the plane. 24 degrees and no wind. Very unusual for this time of year, but I like it! And then everything went smoothly. Customs was quick, the suitcases were immediately there, and no queue at Europcar. So we were already at the hotel at 1 p.m., even though we had only landed at 10 a.m. We now have a spacious Toyota Avanza with actually 8 seats... but with only a mini trunk. We would have preferred a six-seater with a large trunk, so that not everyone can see what we are transporting. But well. We can never leave our things in the car and move away from the car. It can all be organized. When it came to choosing the driver for the first tour to the hotel, no one objected to me driving. It was, of course, a readjustment for me, but at least I have driven on the left-hand side of the road several times. The only stupid thing was that I didn't know the automatic transmission of the Toyota. There was L, 2, and D-3, but nowhere just D. Charley then knew that 2 stood for the second gear (or for the first and second gear, as we later found out). We couldn't figure out what L stood for, but it actually stands for Low and means only first gear. So we drove the whole time in D-3. That worked fine until the speed reached 80 km/h. The Toyota simply refused to shift higher than third gear, so I was driving at 100 km/h at almost 5,000 revolutions. It just didn't seem right. But since I was busy enough with the left-hand traffic and the girls were busy guiding me properly, I didn't drive faster than 80 km/h and therefore at 4,000 revolutions. Then, thanks to the offline navigation, we quickly found the hotel, checked in, had the car parked in the hotel's underground garage, and considered what we should do with the remaining day.

Since the visibility was very clear and it was said that we should definitely go to Table Mountain, we wanted to do just that. But unfortunately, the lady at the hotel told us that the cable car would not run today because of the strong winds... I hadn't seen that when I was on the cable car's website, but well. You trust the locals. So we decided to take a tour on the hop-on, hop-off bus to explore Cape Town a bit. We thought that in the bus, we wouldn't run the risk of ending up in the wrong area. The bus tour was amazing. The first stop was the cable car at Table Mountain... which suddenly started operating.... Now we had already bought the tickets for the bus, and it was already 2:30 p.m., and the bus only ran until 5 p.m. Going up the mountain and then going down again seemed too tight. We will try to visit Table Mountain the day after tomorrow. The further bus tour took us along the coast, with more great houses, bars, and bays. We then got off at the yacht harbor, strolled along bars and restaurants, and had a smoothie. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long because we had to catch the last bus at 4:45 p.m.

Back at the hotel, we chilled for a while and then met in the lobby at 6 p.m. for dinner. I had found an insider tip for dinner in my travel guide: Marco's African Restaurant with local specialties, a 10-minute walk away. I briefly asked at the reception if it was safe to walk, and they confirmed, so off we went. And I must say, I really feel safe here in the tourist area. Firstly, there are securities at every hotel. Secondly, there are really many Europeans walking around, sitting in all the bars outside, and thirdly, at every traffic light, there are people with safety vests on which also says 'Security'. So that was fine. The restaurant immediately made a great impression, both in terms of appearance and the staff, and later in the evening there was also live music. Perfect. We even had our own waitress, who introduced herself to us and read us the specials of the day. And then, out of curiosity, we couldn't contain ourselves anymore. We ordered fried caterpillars. Aaaaah, crazy. But delicious. Crispy. It can be eaten. It won't be my new favorite dish, but it's okay. And then we had the Serengeti platter with small steaks of springbok, kudu, and crocodile, served with mashed beans. It was delicious. Each of us had a great main course, we all shared the appetizer, each had a glass of wine, and we had a liter of water.... And all this cost us a total of €56, including a tip. Isn't that amazing? The live band also created a great atmosphere with many well-known, as well as unknown, songs, and I could have stayed listening and dancing for hours, but the other girls were tired by now and wanted to go home. I can understand that. They didn't sleep as well as I did. But I'm still all pumped up. The whole day was great. It's going to be a fantastic vacation!

Oh, by the way, the car problem has now been solved, after three (!) men from the hotel were thinking about how the transmission could work and one of them asked Europcar. Apparently, the D-3 gear can be shifted to D by giving it a slight additional twist to the left, which is supposed to be indicated on the speedometer... We will see tomorrow if it works. Maybe then I won't confuse the turn signal with the windshield wiper so often. :-D