Cape Town - June 11th

June 11th, 2008

Short: Plane arrived at 8:00am, Met Minette at the airport, Niki and I met at the waterfront, quick tour of the waterfront shops, staying at a beautiful house setup on a bluff overlooking the ocean, headed out to the wine region for lunch and a tasting, stopped at Twende and picked up the Land Rover, enjoyed a great steak, and headed to bed.

After a wonderful 17 hours of flight time and a brief 10 hour layover at Heathrow I arrived into Cape Town around 8am this morning. The weather was beautiful; approximately 15C (59F) and raining hard. Minette, from Twende (The place Niki and I purchased the Land Rover from), met me at the airport and we immediately proceeded to get soaked as we walked to her car. Minette has only been with Twende for about a month, but before taking her current job had been working on Overland trucks as a tour guide for 6 years. It goes without saying she has a great deal of experience driving across many of the southern African countries and camping. I was relieved to hear the camp grounds are generally well maintained and set in beautiful locations. I also learned of a slight problem with the Land Rover we purchased. The truck apparently had sat at the Land Rover dealer for the last month and only entered the shop for its tune-up that morning. Minette went to the shop personally to get the vehicle worked on. Nikolai has therefore been driving a loaner car for the last day, but Rover was scheduled to be ready in the evening. Both Niki and I were clear, “We are willing to wait a day or two as long as it means the car is set for the trip”.

The drive from the airport to the Waterfront was only about 20 minutes, and we met Nikolai at the closest pub (Just kidding!) – although it wouldn’t have been a surprise. We met at the petrol station exchanged some quick questions and a good bye and headed to Nikolai’s friends place. In true Niki fashion we have been completely “hooked up”. Deetje, a friend of Niki’s, was kind enough to let us stay with her for the first few nights. Deetje’s place is beautiful, set up on the side of mountain overlooking Cape Town and the Ocean (Picture below). Her parents own a few south African businesses and typically live at the house in the Summer (it is now the winter). She is studying for her MBA in Cape Town and therefore living full-time at the house.

After a shower both Niki and I headed out for what we thought would be a quick lunch and a shopping trip, but ended up being a tour of the wine region an hour outside of Cape Town. The wine region is a beautiful landscape with the vineyards set amongst jagged mountains and even the occasional waterfall (See picture). We stopped for lunch and sat outside under a propane heater and then headed to a winery for a tasting. The tasting was great, only 3 dollars and we were the only ones (which we actually found to be a bit odd). After about 9 glasses of wine (Just kidding again!) we headed back into town and met Cliff and Minette at Twende to pickup the Land Rover. Twende is an overland services company and their primary service is overhauling the large overland trucks used for touring Africa. As you can see in the picture below our Rover is dwarfed by a line of these trucks being worked on. As of yet, Twende has been very professional. When we arrived all of our gear was itemized and every portion of the vehicle was inspected. We also were able to get our first look at our accommodation over the next two months. The tent is fit to the top of car and actually looks quite comfortable. Only one issue: Upon inspecting the tent we found you could not zipper the cover over the tent, a real issue when traveling 100k’s. The tent had to be removed and we will pick it up Friday morning. After all of the paperwork we took the car and headed back to the house and met Deetje and Jan, a friend of hers. A steak dinner (At Nelson’s Eye – Great place!) later both Niki and I passed out…A great first day.