Cape Town, The Mother City
In the wee hours after hosting a wine and cheese affair, we wake up slightly hung over, ready for the cab. We wake up the kids, pack our bags, and are out the door more quickly than you can say Cape Town, our eventual destination.
Once we arrive in Cape Town, we pick up the rental car, a Chevy, would you believe it, and make our way out of the airport area.
South Africa itself has stringent regulations regarding the travel with kids, in order to thwart international child trafficking. This requires an original birth certificate of each child, plus a marriage certificate that confirms that the parents are, indeed, married. The officials in Johannesburg don't disappoint. After browsing through our passports, there is the demand for the birth certificates before each passport receives a stamp, and we are on the next flight to Cape Town, a mere two hours away.
Once we arrive in Cape Town, we pick up the rental car, a Chevy, would you believe it, and make our way out of the airport area.
After passing some seedy areas featuring a couple of shanty towns near the airport, we waste no time losing our way and end up where you probably want to get lost least of all - downtown, near the harbor. Somehow we do find our way to Table View. Table View is a northern suburb of Cape Town across the bay from downtown. This is a place that offers suburb views of the ocean, the downtown area with Table Mountain in the background, and the former penal colony of Robben Island. We locate the apartment and unpack. As already described, the views are superb. The coast stretches for miles in both directions, and we watch kite surfers attacking the angry surf off Blouberg Beach.
Despite the shanties near the airport, it quickly becomes obvious that Cape Town residents enjoy a high quality of life. The roads are spotless, with hardly any potholes or patches, and the presence of modern store and restaurant chains suggest that Cape Town is probably as first world as any western city.
We head off to an early dinner and are pleasantly surprised at how affordable everything is here. A full dinner for four people, plus four local (very tasty) draft beers costs us 28 dollars. Are you listening, Singapore?
The wind outside is absolutely lethal coming from the west, which is even more remarkable, considering that we are sitting in the second floor of the restaurant. Across the street from the apartment is a nice little playground right there on the beach, which the kids charge the moment they see it, gale force winds or not. But that's kids for you. You could chase them through a hurricane if you told them there were swings and a slide at the end of it.
The first day is for investigating the area and shopping for groceries. That would be Checkers, where we get what we need for the week, plus a couple of bottles of inexpensive, but quality South African wines.
For beginners, two thumbs up. Nice weather, 70-75 degrees, uncloudy skies, plus wide sandy beaches that probably don't end until Namibia. I think we can get used to it.
And we haven't even sampled the tourist attractions yet.
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