Advertisement
Published: October 18th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Sorry this last blog on our African trip is rather belated but we’ve now been back in the UK over two weeks - and been to Crete for 10 days on a cheap package deal! In that last week in Cape Town we had various vehicle related things to sort out but had time for a last little sortie down towards the southernmost point of the continent (Cape Agulhas, not Cape of Good Hope) and back through the winelands - and more time wandering the great waterfront area of Cape town.
Driving the rugged coastal route from Cape Town eastwards once we had got past the spread of development on the flat land, and passing through a number of holiday/weekend settlements, reinforced for us the rather nice lifestyle many Cape Townians must have as they have within their reach so many spectacular spots. Plus for September, the weather, by Wellington standards is already balmy!
We stayed a night at a very picturesque holiday and fishing town called Arniston where again there are brilliant white beaches stretching for miles - in fact the whole town is white-washed in keeping with the original style of early fishing cottages which are now protected.
Then we moved inland and circled back through lush farmland and over a couple of very high passes staying a couple of nights in Franschoek - an early settlement of several French Hugenot families and now a centre devoted to gourmet cuisine and fine wine. This place was like Martinborough multiplied by 100!!
In Franschoek we had several experiences to remember and not all to do with food and wine: we were staying downstairs in a rather expensive chalet on the Chamonix Vineyard and during that first evening we were flooded by the upstairs shower which caused the lights to go out followed by the duty manager and another little man to traipse in out for and hour resulting in the lights working and a rubbish tin placed under the on-going drip; they moved us to their so-called hunting lodge called the Leopard room on their small game reserve the next morning and refunded that first night, but then we slept in very fine linen surrounded by stuffed zebras, kudu and springbox in a leather and heavy furniture suite where the info said “he hoped we would enjoy the decor that had not been influenced by ladies!” We dined
at the vineyard’s French restaurant that second night and the power went off - by candlelight we still got our fabulous meal as they cooked by gas but it was rather smoked out from the fire, the weather having turned wet and cold; back in the leopard’s den later that night the power went on and off several times which caused the little freezer (no fridge) to stay turned off so our ½ eaten pot of lovely Belgian choc icecream melted so we had that for breakfast; went to have a shower and found there was no water! What next we thought - it was actually hilarious in the end but we had thought we must be jinxing the place! In all fairness there had been unusually heavy rain over those two nights that had caused all sorts of problems - not the flood from the shower though, I’m sure.
What a beautiful spot though and we did start to feel that we were restoring and reminding ourselves of the finer things in our first-world lifestyle - or was this a reward for having survived 80 days on the road?! Back in Cape Town for the last couple of
days we drove down to the Cape of Good Hope on a day of absolutely howling wind and otherwise wandered the great waterfront area which was really close to where we were staying and sat around listening to various African style busking bands and singing quartets and generally relaxed - all rather nice! The vehicle passed muster with a few extra but not surprising costs and was bought back by DriveAfrica as agreed.
We can recommend, most highly, this form of travel and process for doing so. Drive Africa is not a big company dealing mainly with rental cars but they were very helpful and having their own mechanic downstairs gave a good service, complete with drop-off at the airport for our departure. We are still saying now that we would do it all again at the drop of a hat - it was just brilliant - and I’m going to rigorously sort photos so we don’t bore you all too much!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0515s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb