Category Archives: Adventures

Road-tripping: Stutt/Grahamstown to Oudtshoorn

Adventures, Car, Eastern Cape,

Waking up at 4:15 to catch a bus. The bus leaves just after 5. You need to be there 30 minutes before. A little extra time to get ready. My phone blinks at me as I open my eyes. An sms. “We regret to inform you…”. The bus is late. I lie there. Not enough time to go back to sleep. Too early to be awake. A cup of coffee. An energy drink.

The bus eventually leaves at 6:10am. Finally on the move, on the go. I sit in my little window seat. Early morning light splashes golden across the green, late-summer veld. The forests between Stutt and King William’s Town. The rolling hills between King and Peddie. The game farms between Peddie and Grahamstown.

Grahamstown morning. I wander up to Dulce’s and order a coffee. I have a few hours to kill in Grahamstown – a few hours of work to put in. I sit at my table and drink coffee and order breakfast and work, while the sun from the window makes its slow migration across the table-top.

Strange people in come in for breakfast. The curt, abrupt businessman harrying the waitress, rushing through his food, hurrying to get on with his day. The older, less wealthy man who argues with the waitress because they’re increased the prices and he has just enough for breakfast with a sausage and a coffee. The regular who knows the staff and order the same thing every time. The fussy woman who wants to swap out half the ingredients in the meal and then spends breakfast on her phone, loudly planning a busy social life.

I answer calls, too, wishing fervently that today wasn’t the day people decided to contact me after weeks of not calling. I tire of working. Time to take a break.

The noise of singing and bustle lures me out into the road. I have shopping to do anyway. Outside, a little further down the road, a group of 50 or so people sing and dance outside the High Court. A political protest. I am struck, amused, by the passing comment of a waiter as I am leaving the coffee shop. He sighs, clicks his tongue and says dismissively, “ANC again”.

Shopping done and I move to another coffee shop. More calls, more work. This is one of my favourite places in Grahamstown. I used to stop her often when I was a student.

A little later in the day, we set off: road-tripping. From here we will drive clear across the country to Stellenbosch. Two people in a small car filled with luggage and things and CD after CD of random music. We stop occasionally. Nanaga to pick up a late lunch, Kareedo to buy airtime.

We watch the landscape. We both like to travel, both notice the land. We drive past game farms, past sheep and mountains of solid rock, through fruit and farming valleys. We stop and buy a bag of mostly not-rotten – although Richard discovers later that they taste funny – apples from a man with at least one arm and several teeth missing, who cannot speak English but is extremely determined.

Beyond Joubertina, Misgund and Kareel, the cloud is low and it is starting to get a little dusk-dim and misty. In the dim light, the windows of cottages glow orange. The look safe and solid and warm in the growing darkness. Richard explains that our eyes switch from seeing colour to seeing contrast at night. I didn’t know that. We talk about blue mountains as silhouettes. Earlier. Earlier, also, light through clouds on majestic mountains like driving through an inspirational poster.

The conversation moves back and forth. The kind of conversation that soars and plunges and drifts and meanders. We reach no conclusions but share and tease and turn over ideas. Back and forth.

At some point we hit something that jumps up from the road in front of the car. I think it’s a frog. Richard thinks it is brown and furry. Later we realise that we have, someone, at some point, lost a front number-plate.

It is dark by the time we arrive in Oudsthoorn. Dark and beautiful. The streets are almost deserted. The buildings stand in their old-age glory. With the help of cell-phone internet, we local and head for Church Street and the backpackers. We check in and then head out for something to eat. The car guard is surreally friendly and polite and offers the following days weather predictions. Dinner is great – Karoo Ostrich. We return to the backpackers to work and, finally, to sleep.

City Sightseeing Cape Town Tour – Red Route

Adventures, bus, Cape Town, ,
City Sightseeing Cape Town tour – Red Route
Last week I spent a couple of days in Cape Town. Cape Town holds a special place in my heart, partly because it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and partly because, having lived there twice, I have that inexplicably Capetonian, often-mocked-by-Joburgers attachment to the lump of rock that dominates the scenery. This time of year, the days are long and beautiful, particularly when the wind isn’t blowing (and even to some extent when it is) as the city lives up to its reputation as a particularly attractive place.
It is also a place where I feel quite strongly that one should throw caution and social pressure to the roaring South Easter and enjoy the sensation of being a tourist. So, after an extremely frustrating morning of work, I set off on a Thursday afternoon to find something exciting to see in Cape Town. I was staying in town-ish (Cape Town Backpackers), so close to town. My initial plan was to spend a few happy hours at a museum or go back and finish exploring the castle, but then a red, open-top sightseeing bus drove past and I was immediately sold.
The departure (and terminal) point for these city sightseeing buses is the dedicated stop in front of the Two Oceans Aquarium at the Waterfront. The buses use a hop-on, hop-off system, so it is possible to spend a whole day travelling from tourist destination to tourist destination. A one-day pass costs a mere R120 (a Windhoek City tour charges R200). I didn’t have a whole day, so I decided just to sit back and enjoy the tour from the top of the bus. For the record, it is highly advisable not to forget sunscreen – even though the wind keeps it cool when you’re moving, the sun can be quite fierce.
The Red Route is the city tour. It starts by circling around from the Waterfront past the ICC, up Adderley Street, past St George’s and the SA Museum, around past parliament and the Jewish Museum, through District Six and back past the Castle and the Gold Museum. The whole way along, disembodied voices tell you interesting things about the places you’re passing via a set of red headphones handed to you when you buy your ticket. Yes, I realise it is probably mostly information that can be picked up in other ways but it is somehow more interesting and definitely more ‘sticky’ with the visual reinforcement at the same time. I didn’t realise, for example, that the pretty Lutheran Evangelical Church in town was, for the first five years of its existence, disguised as a barn because no church other than the Dutch Reformed Church was allowed in the Cape. Nor that the war Memorial near the station is dedicated to those who died in the world wars and those who perished in the Korean War.
From town, the bus travels up Buitengracht, New Church and Kloof Nek towards the lower cable station. Lions Head and Table Mountain both rose majestically against the blue sky as we got closer and closer. The road up to the lower cable-way is… um… exciting in a bus but the views are worth it. Several cable cars travelled up and down as the bus waited. The bus stops for a few minutes at the lower cable station, where people are able to hop off and wander around a bit. I was hugely tempted to go up the mountain, but decided there simply wouldn’t be time before I was due to meet up with a friend. One day is one day.
After the cable station, the bus heads towards Camps Bay. The wind was starting to come up now and the twists of Geneva Drive were a little hairy but the views of Atlantic sparkling below and the 12 Apostles stretching behind were exquisite. Also, a reminder of why people pay millions to live in Camps Bay.
From there, the bus winds its way past the stunning beaches and millionaire-flats of Clifton, through Sea Point, Three Anchors Bay, Mouille Point and back, past Somerset Hospital, to the Waterfront.
It was a lovely trip and a great way to spend a sunny afternoon. By the end, the South Easter was drifting the cloud across the edges of the mountain, adding its own special kind of magic to the day. I stopped for calamari and chips with the seagulls at the Waterfront before heading back to the backpackers and the evening’s plans.

Last week I spent a couple of days in Cape Town. Cape Town holds a special place in my heart, partly because it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and partly because, having lived there twice, I have that inexplicably Capetonian, often-mocked-by-Joburgers attachment to the lump of rock that dominates the scenery. This time of year, the days are long and beautiful, particularly when the wind isn’t blowing (and even to some extent when it is) as the city lives up to its reputation as a particularly attractive place.

Continue reading →

A walking tour of Windhoek

Adventures, Namibia, , ,

Acknowledgement: This walking tour came straight from the guidebook I was using – Bradt Guide Namibia. I’d highly recommend the tour and the guidebook was pretty good, if a little heavier than I’d have preferred.

I set off early in the morning. A strange side-effect of travelling is that I appear to wake up far earlier than I would otherwise expect to. Perhaps it has to do with sleeping in a dorm full of strangers. Although, it may also be to do with the fact that I was going to bed ridiculously early – almost to bed with the sun, so I suppose up with the sun wasn’t unreasonable. Given that I was trying to explore a particularly hot place at the height of summer, it turned out to be useful. Most days, I’d head off early and be back at the backpackers by mid-day, in time for a deliciously cool swim before the afternoon thunderstorm gathered.

After the standard breakfast of pancakes (supplied as part of the cost of staying at the backpackers – Cardboard Box Backpackers, Windhoek FTW), I set off walking. It was already getting warm but the day was early enough that the morning cool hadn’t quite burned off yet, so things were just fresh enough to be pleasant. I walked down along Dr Frans Indongo Street towards the shopping centre of town. My first stop was Post Street Mall to see the meteors. The Gideon Meteors are a group of 33 meteor-pieces found in Gideon, Namibia, are part of the largest and possibly oldest meteor fall ever found. They’re shiny and black and red and apparently metallic. The largest weighs 650kg.

Continue reading →