Cape Town

Friday 30th March – Arrival in Africa

Fortunately, our South African Airlines took off on time and gave us a smooth and uneventful 10-hour flight to Johannesburg where we arrived just after sunrise.
This gave us our first sight of Africa, even if it was just the vast concrete of the sprawling airport. We still had to endure a further 2 hour wait and another transfer to the domestic terminal for our flight to Cape Town. By now we were all nearing exhaustion but were kept waiting a little longer when fog delayed our flight to Cape Town by a further 45 minutes.

Finally, we lifted off from Johannesburg and landed in Cape Town at about 10 am local time. We staggered from the plane, collected our luggage and made our way to the exit of the airport. I was relieved to be met by a tall, smiling Africa who introduced himself as “Tickey”. Apparently this was his surname but, as his first name was the somewhat unlikely “Claudius” he quickly explained that he preferred to be referred to simply as Tickey. He also introduced his quiet assistant “Komoro” and explained that they would be looking after us for our entire time in Africa.

Grabbing our bags, we followed Tickey to their waiting safari bus which was parked just outside in a 15-minute parking zone. Our luggage was packed while we crawled into our seats. Since the vehicle could hold 16 passengers and we had only 11 in our group we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of space available. The vehicle had very large wheels giving it a high ground clearance. It also had two large freezers at the rear which were used to keep our food and drinks cool during the trip. One thing that the bus did not have was air conditioning, although this certainly would have been welcome later in our trip.
As it turned out the other thing the bus did not have was one of the Ghostriders !
Somehow in our walk from the exit to the bus Jenny had become separated from the group and was now nowhere to be found. Search parties were dispatched but, after 30 minutes of frantic searching, she was still missing. This was not a promising start to our trip and Tickey was getting concerned that the bus would be towed away. Just as we were starting to worry, Jenny was found waiting on the lower level. With a great sense of relief, we finally shut the bus door and began the drive from the airport to our hotel in Cape Town.

Along the way we were able to get our first real images and impressions of Cape Town. Although Cape Town is normally regarded as one of the most prosperous areas of South Africa it still possesses significant areas of shanty towns. Here residents have erected small dwellings made out of any materials they can get their hands on – wood, plastic sheeting, corrugated iron being the most common.

A little further on we got our first sight of the towering Table Mountain which is certainly the most famous feature of this city by the sea. In fact, as viewed from the Atlantic Ocean, you can see that the city is literally sandwiched in between the mountain and the ocean. One of our first goals on this trip was to climb this mountain and view Cape Town from its 1100 metre summit.

Our hotel was situated in the waterfront area, only a short walk from the new Victoria Wharf complex. This is a bustling region, full of shops, restaurants and open air entertainment. The nearby wharf is still a fully operational port and this adds a vibrancy that is so sadly lacking from Melbourne’s Docklands precinct.
Over the next few days we came to appreciate just how convenient it was to have a hotel in this area.

After lunch at a waterfront restaurant, we finally were taken to our hotel. More correctly we were taken directly to prison! We discovered that the Breakwater Hotel was formerly one of the major prisons, but it has now been converted to a hotel and university. We were relieved to find it modern and clean and its location was absolutely perfect. Not only was it only a short walk from the waterfront but it also offered a magnificent view of Table Mountain.

Before checking into our rooms, we had a short team briefing with Tickey at which he outlined the way the safari was going to be conducted. By this time, we were all sitting with glazed looks on our faces as it had been something like 40 hours since any of us had been asleep in a real bed. Although the natural tendency is to go straight to bed in the middle of the afternoon, this is not a wise thing to do as it only prolongs the period of jet lag. We all decided to tough it out till after dinner and then finally get into our beds at about 8.30 pm.Read more