The African Adventure Begins......

... with the first of the summer weather here in Cape Town, after what we are reliably told has been a wetter- and colder-than-normal spring so far. It's actually been a wonderful weekend, with clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid- to high-20s, and absolutely none of the energy-draining humidity which characterised so much of our time travelling in South-East Asia.  

We're staying in a delightfully-positioned, small apartment in the middle-class suburb of Sea Point (thanks to Jacques and his mother, Nicky, via the Airbnb website). It's about 3-4km from the Waterfront area - the main city-centre bustling harbour and tourist attraction, with its almost European/Mediterranean bar- and cafe-culture vibe. Indeed, had we not had to travel past the 'Cape Flats' shanty-town area just on the fringes of the city on our way from the airport, it would be hard to accept that we're in an African country at at all. (Actually, this was also the first 'challenge' to our determination to stay out of the politics of the country if we can - our very helpful Indian/Asian-looking taxi-driver, pointing to the Cape Flats shanty-town, remonstrated loudly about the hundreds of 'unwanted immigrants from all over Africa' who had settled here in recent years, 'most of whom', he said, are too lazy to work, and 'don't even want to pay their rents'! We did our best with a variety of non-committal grunts - it being only about 10 minutes into our time anywhere in South Africa, and breathed a sigh of relief when he changed the subject!)

Our 'landlady', Nicky, very kindly drove us to the Waterfront area after we'd unpacked and freshened up, and left us to explore this beautiful part of Cape Town for our first afternoon here, leaving us to walk 'home' along the very attractively lawned beach-road promenade in the early evening. (Oh, and it was really amazing to us that, as neither Jacques nor Nicky could be here when we first arrived, they'd left us instructions about how to find the apartment keys - which they'd left just inside the open kitchen window. Not quite the scary-sounding, crime-ridden place we'd been a little apprehensive about after all, then.)

Yesterday (Sunday, 2 Nov, and our first full day here) we took the open-top bus for a whistle-stop tour of the highlights of the City, which also allowed us to 'hop off' twice - once to catch the revolving(!) cable-car up to the top of Table Mountain, and again to have a beer overlooking the famous Camps Bay beach resort.  Here is a picture of Table Mountain from the Waterfront.

Table Mountain was even more breathtaking and beautiful than we hoped. We spent nearly 3 hours walking around on the flat 'table-top', enjoying heart-stopping sheer drops with views over the City, the busy harbour towards Robben Island, and across the beautifully blue Atlantic ocean. It was strange to think that there is no land between us and Antarctica, nearly 7,000 kilometres south of here. We enjoyed looking at the many beautiful flowering shrubs just opening up for the Spring, as well as several interesting birds and a few lizards - all of which we have yet to identify, once we've bought the appropriate wildlife-spotting books. Sadly for us, however, we didn't see any of the little 'dassies' - rather cute-looking furry mammals which seem a bit like a large guinea-pig or a small tail-less beaver, which apparently are found living ONLY on and around Table Mountain and nowhere else in the world, and which are apparently - and rather bizarrely - the closest relative to the elephant!   The following picture is NOT a dassie, nor an elephant ...

The stop at Camps Bay was also, but differently, enjoyable. This is the place where Cape Town's 'beautiful people' hang out, mainly pretty scantily-clad, and where 'Hello' and similar magazines have a permanent photo-journalist presence, in the hope of spotting and 'papping' the many celebs who frequent this very attractive, up-market beach resort with its many cocktail and sundowner bars. Fortunately, Andy and I were well disguised, so we managed to avoid too much attention from the paparazzi on this particular occasion.

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The first of these pictures is Camps Bay, viewed as we were descending from Table Mountain.   The second is Andy hiding from the Paparazzi in a beachfront bar.

After such a busy day, we were glad to be able to walk to the beach-front promenade here in Sea Point, where we enjoyed a very meat-oriented meal of a delicious blue-cheese-topped steak (me) and a kebab of Kudu and Springbok meat (Andy).  

Today (Monday 4 Nov) we shopped for fresh vegetables, fruit, meat and fish in a nearby Woolworths supermarket - haven't yet discovered if it's the same Woolworths as we're all familiar with, but it came highly recommended by Nicky. Prices (for foodstuffs, restaurant meals, accommodation, etc.) are somewhat cheaper than in the UK, but significantly higher than we've been used to in South-East Asia, so we'll be doing a lot more self-catering on this trip than in our previous two 'retirement adventures'.

Looking forward to a lazy evening now (at least for me - Andy's cooking dinner as I type this!), in the relatively cool heat of evening - though it's still T-shirt weather, and we'll be enjoying our meal in the charming little courtyard garden of Jacques and Nicky's place.

More news in a few day's time.....