I'm not sure if it was the pending anxiety attack or the scotch and sambuca shots the night before (not necessarily exclusive from the former) but my trip started with me throwing up all over my brother in laws car at Adelaide Airport. Anxiety grew as i approached the checkin counter, scenarios going over in my head, none of them good. Do i have vomit on my face? Will they (correctly) assume i'm drunk and not let me on the plane? In my nervousness will I forget not to say bomb? Did I leave my Passport / Tickets / Wallet / Sense of Humour on the kitchen table? A smile and an "Enjoy your flight" suggested not.The new Adelaide Airport had as much character as the cafe where i said goodbye to the family and friends which i wouldn't see for 5 years. If i didn't already look terrible one might have suggested i looked "emotional" as I got my last glimpses of Adelaide from the sky bridge on to my flight.
Once off the ground and flying over central Australia I felt a lot better. From previous experience on long haul flights this is about the time that the Airlines should offer chemically induced comas to aleave boredom and general discomfort from sitting with your knees to your chest for ten hours.In its place it they served up movies and TV on my own screen and better yet, old school Nintendo games. Sweet.
Singapore Airport is a little like Westfields Marion (shops, eateries, cinema) but without the annoying school kids, 8 yr old Paris Hiltons and credit card / loans / shutter / foxtel salesman. Even bigger than the spectacle of the Indoor Garden was the shear numbers of fellow travellers with cameras out taking pictures of the indoor garden. I wonder what sort of boring destinations these people had come from that would warrant it such attention and hoped it wasn't Cape Town.
You might be thinking that Singapore isn't on the way from Adelaide to Cape Town. Well it is if its considerably cheaper to fly half way across the globe and back with Singapore Airlines ( or Malaysian) than it is to fly direct from Perth with QANTAS or SAA.
Amazingly I slept almost all the way from Singapore to J'Burg. From the air J'Burg looks like someone got a big handful of city and threw it, splat, against the featureless desert. A concentration of buildings in the middle which gradually peters out into nothing. I'm not overly disappointed that I'm not leaving the plane at the airport.
Cape Town thankfully was much more exciting as we flew in over Table Mountain and the Cape Peninsula before our final decent to the Airport on the flats. As i walked into the Arrivals Hall that familiar feeling crept back over me. Oh my god what I have done? What if my cards don't work here? What if no one speaks English? How do i get to my hostel? Will that Taxi driver I'm approaching be the one that everyone warned me against? It turned out he wasn't and with some general banter about the upcoming cricket series i was on my way into the city a relieved man. A banner on the side of the road for local elections remarked on the progress made in the passed ten years and I couldn't help but shudder as i looked over the townships either side of the road hoping that it referred more to civil liberties and human rights than living conditions.
I stayed in a hostel called Inn Long Street, right in the heart of the City. I would liken Long Street to Hindley Street in Adelaide. A bit grimey with lots of cafes, pubs and shops. The hostel itself is pretty low key but there's a decent few of Table Mountain from the first floor balcony. In my orientation "getting over my fear of everything" walk down long street i was approached by a handful of people wanting to sell me drugs but found if you got used to that Cape Town was just as comfortable as anywhere else. People there were real friendly ..... they just wanted your money.
I started my first full day In Cape Town with a walk around the heavily promoted but largely dull V&A Waterfront, a lot like Darling Harbour. some notably exceptions were the Jazz band busking on the Promenade. The ferry to Robben Island was the draw card and the sole reason i endured the hour of walking around overpriced uninspired souvenir shops until the first boat left. I raked by my millionth photo of table mountain as the trip across table bay offered yet another spectacular angle. The first half of the tour took us around the island, hosted by rather funny gentleman who obviously took great pleasure in the fact that Xhosa was so foreign to all of us (and Australia's poor form in the cricket). The second half of the tour was in the prison. Our guide for this part of the tour was an ex prisoner. He was charged in 1984 with treason and was sentenced to 15 years. He told his account of the torture and degradation at the hands of the South African Police in great detail. Fortunately for him he was only there for five years. He also told the story of nelson Mandela and showed us where events in the history of the ANC and the apartheid movement took place including Mandela's cell.
I awoke the next morning to find that Table Mountain - cloudless for the past two days - was covered in cloud. This apparently was not an unusual occurrence but did mean that the hike up to the top that i had planned with a Dane and another Aussie at the hostel was off. Tip: If the mountain is clear, climb it, even if you hadn't planned to that day as you never know when you'll get another clear day. The girl at reception suggested we try Lions Head instead as this was clear of the cloud that covered the entire of the Table Mountain Ranges. It maybe smaller than Table Mountain but it was still a pretty strenuous climb, the view at the top however was worth it as it provided yet another angle of Table Mountain, this time with cloud, and of the entire Range down to cape point.
I had intended to hired a car and drive myself around the cape peninsula. However after observing the fact that traffic lanes, red, green and stop signs were entirely open to interpretation i decided on other means.
After looking at a few brochures i decided on hiring a taxi for the day. It may sound expensive but in the end it was less expensive than a bus tour and also provided me with the flexibility of going wherever i wanted and also provided with my own tour guide. Simons Town is built around a naval base. The main interests were the Naval Museum, Boulder Beach Penguin Colony and yet another view of the Table Mountain Ranges (from behind this Time.)
Connecting Simons Town to Hout Bay is Chapman Peak Drive. This shits all over the Great Ocean Road. Not only is actually along the coast all the way, its also better looking.
Hout Bay is where i would live if i had a choice. It is absolutely amazing, surrounded by Table Mountain Ranges on three sides and the Atlantic ocean on the other.
It is also home to Africas largest bird sanctuary (at least it claims to be), with over 3000 species. Kudos to the taxi drive for pointing this one out as none of the brochures i had looked at eluded to its existence.
150 pictures later (not bad considering the number of birds) i was back in Cape Town, via Camps Bay and Clifton beach.
I was lucky that when i woke up on my last day in Cape Town table mountain was clear. I did my best to get up there before the tourists ( well the other tourists) but even at 8:00am it was busy. The view from the top as you would expect is awesome and provides some of the only photos of the city with out Table Mountain in the background. By the time i made it back down around midday the coaches had arrived and I was thankful that i made the effort to get up early. I spent that afternoon walking around the city visiting the SA Museum, Company Gardens (the only place in the world that Pigeons and Squirrels fight to the death) and the Castle of Good Hope (built between 1666 and 1679).
On my return to the hostel i found that half of Long Street was closed of and filled with 100,000 people. Someone had obviously found out that this was my last night in Cape Town and thrown me a party. Actually it just happened to coincide with the Cape Town Festival. Every bar and restaurant had a stall out front and within each little side street there was a different band or DJ playing. This ranged from House and Drum & Bass, to tribal music and local rock. My Favourite was probably "The Killers , Suede and kaiser chiefs had a bastard child and sent it to live in Cape Town with their Aunt". The locals called them the dirty skirts. It was an awesome night, starting with Bucket o bulls (5 white spirits, Raspberry and Red Bull) with my fellow hostelites and finishing about at about eight in the morning, half an hour before my tour left.
Cheers,
Schuey.
Once off the ground and flying over central Australia I felt a lot better. From previous experience on long haul flights this is about the time that the Airlines should offer chemically induced comas to aleave boredom and general discomfort from sitting with your knees to your chest for ten hours.In its place it they served up movies and TV on my own screen and better yet, old school Nintendo games. Sweet.
Singapore Airport is a little like Westfields Marion (shops, eateries, cinema) but without the annoying school kids, 8 yr old Paris Hiltons and credit card / loans / shutter / foxtel salesman. Even bigger than the spectacle of the Indoor Garden was the shear numbers of fellow travellers with cameras out taking pictures of the indoor garden. I wonder what sort of boring destinations these people had come from that would warrant it such attention and hoped it wasn't Cape Town.
You might be thinking that Singapore isn't on the way from Adelaide to Cape Town. Well it is if its considerably cheaper to fly half way across the globe and back with Singapore Airlines ( or Malaysian) than it is to fly direct from Perth with QANTAS or SAA.
Amazingly I slept almost all the way from Singapore to J'Burg. From the air J'Burg looks like someone got a big handful of city and threw it, splat, against the featureless desert. A concentration of buildings in the middle which gradually peters out into nothing. I'm not overly disappointed that I'm not leaving the plane at the airport.
Cape Town thankfully was much more exciting as we flew in over Table Mountain and the Cape Peninsula before our final decent to the Airport on the flats. As i walked into the Arrivals Hall that familiar feeling crept back over me. Oh my god what I have done? What if my cards don't work here? What if no one speaks English? How do i get to my hostel? Will that Taxi driver I'm approaching be the one that everyone warned me against? It turned out he wasn't and with some general banter about the upcoming cricket series i was on my way into the city a relieved man. A banner on the side of the road for local elections remarked on the progress made in the passed ten years and I couldn't help but shudder as i looked over the townships either side of the road hoping that it referred more to civil liberties and human rights than living conditions.
I stayed in a hostel called Inn Long Street, right in the heart of the City. I would liken Long Street to Hindley Street in Adelaide. A bit grimey with lots of cafes, pubs and shops. The hostel itself is pretty low key but there's a decent few of Table Mountain from the first floor balcony. In my orientation "getting over my fear of everything" walk down long street i was approached by a handful of people wanting to sell me drugs but found if you got used to that Cape Town was just as comfortable as anywhere else. People there were real friendly ..... they just wanted your money.
I started my first full day In Cape Town with a walk around the heavily promoted but largely dull V&A Waterfront, a lot like Darling Harbour. some notably exceptions were the Jazz band busking on the Promenade. The ferry to Robben Island was the draw card and the sole reason i endured the hour of walking around overpriced uninspired souvenir shops until the first boat left. I raked by my millionth photo of table mountain as the trip across table bay offered yet another spectacular angle. The first half of the tour took us around the island, hosted by rather funny gentleman who obviously took great pleasure in the fact that Xhosa was so foreign to all of us (and Australia's poor form in the cricket). The second half of the tour was in the prison. Our guide for this part of the tour was an ex prisoner. He was charged in 1984 with treason and was sentenced to 15 years. He told his account of the torture and degradation at the hands of the South African Police in great detail. Fortunately for him he was only there for five years. He also told the story of nelson Mandela and showed us where events in the history of the ANC and the apartheid movement took place including Mandela's cell.
I awoke the next morning to find that Table Mountain - cloudless for the past two days - was covered in cloud. This apparently was not an unusual occurrence but did mean that the hike up to the top that i had planned with a Dane and another Aussie at the hostel was off. Tip: If the mountain is clear, climb it, even if you hadn't planned to that day as you never know when you'll get another clear day. The girl at reception suggested we try Lions Head instead as this was clear of the cloud that covered the entire of the Table Mountain Ranges. It maybe smaller than Table Mountain but it was still a pretty strenuous climb, the view at the top however was worth it as it provided yet another angle of Table Mountain, this time with cloud, and of the entire Range down to cape point.
I had intended to hired a car and drive myself around the cape peninsula. However after observing the fact that traffic lanes, red, green and stop signs were entirely open to interpretation i decided on other means.
After looking at a few brochures i decided on hiring a taxi for the day. It may sound expensive but in the end it was less expensive than a bus tour and also provided me with the flexibility of going wherever i wanted and also provided with my own tour guide. Simons Town is built around a naval base. The main interests were the Naval Museum, Boulder Beach Penguin Colony and yet another view of the Table Mountain Ranges (from behind this Time.)
Connecting Simons Town to Hout Bay is Chapman Peak Drive. This shits all over the Great Ocean Road. Not only is actually along the coast all the way, its also better looking.
Hout Bay is where i would live if i had a choice. It is absolutely amazing, surrounded by Table Mountain Ranges on three sides and the Atlantic ocean on the other.
It is also home to Africas largest bird sanctuary (at least it claims to be), with over 3000 species. Kudos to the taxi drive for pointing this one out as none of the brochures i had looked at eluded to its existence.
150 pictures later (not bad considering the number of birds) i was back in Cape Town, via Camps Bay and Clifton beach.
I was lucky that when i woke up on my last day in Cape Town table mountain was clear. I did my best to get up there before the tourists ( well the other tourists) but even at 8:00am it was busy. The view from the top as you would expect is awesome and provides some of the only photos of the city with out Table Mountain in the background. By the time i made it back down around midday the coaches had arrived and I was thankful that i made the effort to get up early. I spent that afternoon walking around the city visiting the SA Museum, Company Gardens (the only place in the world that Pigeons and Squirrels fight to the death) and the Castle of Good Hope (built between 1666 and 1679).
On my return to the hostel i found that half of Long Street was closed of and filled with 100,000 people. Someone had obviously found out that this was my last night in Cape Town and thrown me a party. Actually it just happened to coincide with the Cape Town Festival. Every bar and restaurant had a stall out front and within each little side street there was a different band or DJ playing. This ranged from House and Drum & Bass, to tribal music and local rock. My Favourite was probably "The Killers , Suede and kaiser chiefs had a bastard child and sent it to live in Cape Town with their Aunt". The locals called them the dirty skirts. It was an awesome night, starting with Bucket o bulls (5 white spirits, Raspberry and Red Bull) with my fellow hostelites and finishing about at about eight in the morning, half an hour before my tour left.
Cheers,
Schuey.
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