Cape Town - June 12th

June 12th 2008:

Short: Niki and I slept in and then headed down to the Cape of Good Hope, walked up to the light house, officially began the drive at the cape of good hope with two non-alcoholic Becks, visited some penguins, met friends at a bar for the German soccer match, organized the car, and headed to bed.

Long: After a great ten hour sleep Niki and I headed for the Cape of Good Hope. We figured this would be a great way to test the car and ensure everything was in decent mechanical shape before we headed north. First things first though, we needed to name the Land Rover, and after a few seconds of deliberation we came to the name “Betsy”. Don’t ask us why…it just seemed to work. Driving out of Cape Town was interesting because we began the drive in Clifton Bay, which is one of the more upscale neighborhoods and passed a few of the outlying “townships”. The townships are basically large shanty towns, with an almost entirely black population, located across the city. It is amazing to think that up until 1994 apartheid ruled in South Africa and the repercussions of this can be seen almost everywhere. According to the World Bank South Africa has one of the largest divisions between rich and poor, and this was very apparent when driving around the city.

For those familiar with California, the drive down to the Cape of Good Hope is very much similar to driving route 1. The road winds along steep mountains that overlook the Atlantic…it’s a beautiful drive. The entire Cape Point area was extremely windy, and one this particular day, pretty cold. We stopped at a beach along the way to test the water temperature and as we suspected, it was very cold. Once arriving at Cape Point we walked up to the light house and we surprised to find that Baboons inhabit the area. As you can see from the picture, Niki fits right in. At Cape Point we walked up to the lighthouse and then picked up a sandwich from the store. When we entered the store we couldn’t figure out why one of the workers was holding the door shut, but upon leaving this became clearer. The baboons are smart enough to get into the store, and can steal groceries. There are actually guards, armed with sticks, employed at Cape Point to protect tourists from “smash and grab” baboons. We were told to our white plastic bags to prevent any attack.

We officially began the trip a few km’s away from Cape Point at the Cape of Good Hope (The “South-Western Most Point”) of the African continent. To celebrate we grabbed to non-alcoholic Becks and toasted in front of the sign. Shortly after this a women harassed us for drinking and driving and we kindly explained that we are very responsible chaps and that the beer was non-alcoholic. We don’t think she was convinced... but we have proof of that on video!

On the drive back from Cape Point we stopped at Boulders, one of the few penguin colonies that exist on the African continent. We were fortunate enough to arrive in the early evening when many of the penguins were arriving back from their feeding (See picture below). The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. Betsy seems to run very well. It is worth noting that both Nikolai and I are still getting used to driving on the left side again, perhaps me more so than Nikolai. No issues although the combination of a manual transmission, left side driving, and driving in downtown Cape Town late in the evening, had me at about my limit. Once back in Cape Town we parked the car and headed to Paulaner’s, a German bar, to watch the Germany/Croatia match with Deetje and a few of her friends. Two beers, a few sausages, and some sauerkraut later we were back at her place and quickly passed out.