Upon arriving in Cape Town, we got our rental car, and hit the road! Driving on the left has been interesting, but after three days I'm pretty much used to it. I got honked at on my way out of the airport parking area, but then I was good once I got on the highway. Its kind of a kick to see speed limit signs of 100 and 120 (we figured out that 120 is about 75 mph, so it is pretty fast!) We drove out to Arniston, which is on the East coast of SA, on the Indian Ocean, just north of Cape Agulhas, which is the southernmost tip of Africa. The drive there was just beautiful, and we took a bunch of pictures on Sam's camera that I'll get from her eventually. As we were driving out of Cape Town, we passed a huge slum, which kind of surprised me. Everything else we were passing was so nice, and then all of a sudden this slum popped up out of nowhere. I guess the disparities here between rich and poor are pretty intense.
Our B&B in Arniston was called the Arniston Lodge. The proprietor was this little old guy originally from Germany named Erwin (Pronounced like Irvin). He was so friendly and super nice. The place was really cute and very welcoming. He had a fire going in the living room, and so we sat by the fire for a while before bed. We had dinner at this little restaurant run by a local woman named Willene, called Willene's Kitchen Restaurant. Its literally just like at her house, and she makes pretty simple South African food. It was super good. We had bobotie, which is kind of like mashed up meatloaf with curry and egg, and then you put chutney and grated coconut on top. It was awesome. We also had some kind of local fish that I forget the name of, and these pumpkins she made that were all sweet with cinnamon and basically ended up being like a dessert with our dinner.
In the morning Sam and I walked just down the road from the B&B to check out the Arniston Harbour. The area is an interesting blend. To the right of our road was more like beach houses and summer homes (didn't seem to be many people around there) and then to the left was more of a traditional fishing village (this was where Willene's was). We walked along the beach near the summer homes, and I waded into the Indian Ocean. Very exciting. The water was surprisingly warm, but then when I got out, the sand was so cold against my feet that they went a little numb. We wandered around a bit more and headed back to the Lodge, where breakfast was waiting for us. Yogurt with granola, bacon and eggs, toast, tea, and OJ. Just wonderful. After breakfast, we consulted with Erwin for directions and hit the road to head to Cape Agulhas.
There were two ways to get there, one was all on paved roads and about double the distance and the other kind of cut across on dirt roads and so was much shorter. We decided to try it out on the dirt roads. We kind of missed the turnoff for the road (we actually think that we turned off too soon) and ended up on these weird little farm roads that went all through fields and lots of crops and sheep. The road wasn't even a dirt road, just a car track on either dirt, gravel, or grass. Finally about half an hour into this, we reached a locked gate blocking the road and decided to turn back. We found the correct dirt road and asked a local to point us in the right direction, which he very kindly did. By this time, our car was DISGUSTING from driving through lots of huge mud puddles and splashing all over. Classy. Once we found the right road, the drive to Agulhas was pretty easy. We stopped on the way to get an electrical converter (the plugs here are very weird, and I dont think they are even used anywhere else in the world! They are apparently the old Britist style). So what we got was a plug that has two places on it for a French style plug. I had French adapters, so we plug those into this thing, and then plug our stuff into the French adapter. Awesome. We also stopped at this beach where there were huge waves (we'd later see even bigger ones at Agulhas, and along the Cape of Good Hope as well) and saw some seals playing in the water!
We arrived at the site for Cape Agulhas, where the L'Agulhas lighthouse is. We walked down to the Cape itself, about a kilometer from where we parked Erwin (we named the car after the man who ran the Arniston Lodge!) Cape Agulhas isn't so spectacular as the Cape of Good Hope (its more gradual, you can't really tell its a cape), but it was a really cool spot to visit.
Here we are with the marker for the cape. After this we walked back to the lighthouse and climbed it. I love lighthouses. This one had three very steep flights of wooden stairs (really like a generous term for ladder) and then one ladder the rest of the way up. Its not a very tall lighthouse, but it was SUPER windy everywhere at the Cape, and the lighthouse is up on a hill, so it was visible from aways away.
After that, we drove to Hermanus to have lunch. On our way there, we stopped in Struisbaai, where there is a harbor that we visited where you are supposed to be able to see stingrays. The tide was very high however, and we were told the best time to see them is at low tide. So we didn't see the stingrays, but got some nice shots of the Indian Ocean and the boats at the harbor. For the drive to Hermanus, we stayed on the paved roads after our previous adventure of the morning. We stopped at a winery called Misty Mountains and did a quick wine tasting and bought a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, which we are saving for our last night here. Driving through Hermanus, we stopped to let a guy cross the street, and he got so excited that he literally jumped into the air and smiled excitedly at us. I guess people don't stop here to let pedestrians cross. Sam and I got a big kick out of it. Then we found the Harbour Rock Grill and Sushi Bar, and had a late lunch of sushi and thai food. It was really good, and the restaurant was all the way out on a pier where you had a beautiful view of the harbour going out to the ocean. Just lovely. We even had a wonderful dessert there as well (I had a pavlova.... mmmm). Then we got back on the road and drove to Cape Town to get to our hostel.
This proved to be somewhat of an adventure, as the hostel, the Sunflower Stop, is located at 179 Main Road, and there are about a million "Main Roads" in Cape Town and the surrounding area. So we naturally wound up at the wrong one, which was an apartment building in the area near the University of Cape Town. The gate opened, and we drove into the complex. Then we realized it was wrong, and re-mapped the hostel on my iPad, and got an idea of where it was. But then we realized that the gate had closed and we were stuck inside! I went to look for some kind of office to try to get someone to let us out. The complex smelled like hot dogs and seemed pretty empty. Finally a dude in a spongebob shirt and one of those ridiculous long eared caps came in and I explained to him and he said he'd have his friends open the gate from their apartment. So a few minutes later the gate opened and we were free from that place and finally on our way again!
We arrived at our hostel, and were told it was ok to park our car just on the sidewalk out front, so that's what we did. We met Renan, from Brazil, who works at the hostel and runs the bar there. We settled our stuff in, took a nap (we have our own room, bathroom down the hall), and then got ready to go out. We wanted to go to the Ice Lounge (its an ice bar I had heard of here, if you don't know about Ice Bars, google the Absolut Ice Bar in London to get an idea of what I'm talking about) at the V&A Waterfront. So we got a cab over to that area. Our cabbie was hilarious, when we got to the waterfront he called out the window to a cop, "hey where is this ice place?" obviously the cop was quite confused, so the cabbie elaborated for him "everything ice!". Needless to say, the cop was pretty unhelpful. We then wandered around the V&A waterfront area, only to find out it had closed about a year ago. We ended up at Mitchell's, a bar there that did exist. From there we moved on to Sgt. Pepper's on Long Street, which is where the real bar scene in town is. Overall a fun night.
This morning we headed out around 8:30 to drive down to the Cape of Good Hope. We stopped at KFC (don't judge!) for a quick chicken breakfast, which was uhhhhmazing. Then we go going, driving through the Western most part of Cape Town, along the Atlantic Ocean. We drove on Chapman's Peak Drive, which features 114 turns and sheer cliff drops both above and below you on the road. It was a gorgeous drive. It was lucky that this wasn't my first day of driving on the left or I might have been freaked out a bit, since the road was kind of narrow, and really curvy.
Me and Sam at one of the overlooks on CPD. We drove all along the cape, crossing over to the eastern side after CPD. We stopped at Boulders Beach, where you can see African penguins. They are apparently not too friendly, as they bite and they smell bad. Inside the park, they have a boardwalk that you walk on all the way down to near the water, where you can see tons of penguins just hanging out on the beach and jumping about in the water. This was really cool to see. Pictures are on Sam's camera, so coming soon.
We then continued our drive to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. Once you enter the park, you drive for quite a ways until you actually get to where the cape lighthouse is up on all these rocks of the cliff. It was just beautiful out there. We hiked up to the lighthouse (sort of a hike, it was about a 15 minute walk, but it was just up all these stone steps). From there you can see both sides of cape point. Cape of good hope is a separate little cape just a bit to the west of cape point and you can see it from the top. We took the funicular tram back down to the bottom, and then we drove to the cape of good hope. At the lighthouse:
We are a long way from home! On the way out of the park, we saw all these ostriches. We found out that apparently there is an ostrich farm there, and they just all wander around. At the top of where the lighthouse is (you can't actually climb it, bummer), we saw a dassie, which is a small rodent like thing that is the closest living relative of the elephant. On our drive back, we stopped in a little town called Kalk Bay that Sam had read about in her book. Its just a cute little bayside town, and we had a late lunch at Kalky's, which is a very classic local place where they claim to have the original fish and chips. It was incredible food, and came out super fast as well.
This is REAL fish and chips. This dish puts the Tombs' version to shame (we all already knew their fish and chips sucks thought). We then drove back to cape town (about half an hour from Kalky's) and went to our hostel. We ventured out to the grocery store to buy some food since there's a nice kitchen here and we can cook stuff. So we made some tea and grilled cheese and just kind of called it an early night.
Today the plan is to go to Table Mountain (you take a cable car that rotates on the way up to the top), and then to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Hopefully I can write a post after today.
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