First three days in South Africa

Regarding why we suddenly decided to hop to South Africa on our trip to Europe, I have to mention my daughter Silvia, who is crazy about football. She wanted to meet another lunatic like herself, Vee from South Africa. Silvia has been sharing this obsession with Vee for 3 years through the internet, but now it was vital to meet in person. I had carefully promised once that if there’s a veterinary function in South Africa we would go.

Then came about the 39^th WSAVA congress in Cape Town and I had to fulfill my promise. We start from Helsinki in the evening and arrive the next morning. On our way, Silvia tells me that as her friend is busy with university at the moment, she might not be able to spend a lot of time with us and as public transportation is also so and so, we might have to rent a car. Well, this is a suprise. The smaller concer is that we haven’t budgeted this into our travel expenses. Worse is the thought that even though I’ve been to SA 14 years ago, I can’t for the life of me remember on which hand the traffic is. I pray that it’s on the right side. Of course my expectations turn out to be false and a few hours later I find myself behind the rightside wheel of a small Wolkswagen frightened and fraught. I promise my child that we’ll go around the parking lot a few hours and I’ll learn to drive. 

Unfortunately the road takes me right out of the parking lot of the airport and onto a freeway. The fact that I don’t need to change gears (we were smart enough the get an automatic) and my daughter who makes sure I stay in my own lane are my only consolidations. We have our own keywords for turns. When we turn right we say ‘farther’ and hen we turn left way say ‘closer’. Yet again we have to turn on the smart but very expensive lady on Silvia’s smartphone to show us the way.

Silvia has booked us a lovely little B&B right on the foot of Table Mountain. 

First dog in South-Africa. Our B & B Guard Dog

Our apartment

Welcome Letter with a glass of wine.

In the evening I gater my courage once more and we drive to the city centre.

At first I turn the wrong way and we end up on a mountain, but the views make it worthwhile.

 In the end we find Waterfront, Silvia gets her sushi and I get my first South African wine. A little doesn’t hurt. Our waiter is a lovely chap. He asks us where we’re from and when we say Estonia, he nodds and says he knows it. Looking at our surprised faces he says that he knows our football team. Silvia gets all proud, but then we hear that he knows our team only because we lose all the time by 6 or 7 goals to nil. Well, what can you do. Estonia isn’t a football country after all.

Waterfront

Dinner under my brothers name. Greetings to Mart in Brazil.

The other dog in our B&B.

On the second day the weather is cloody and cold. We sit by the radiator with a book and computer. Is this the reason we came to Cape Town? After a while we go outside. We plan to visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela used to be incarcerated.

Silvia (in her blog): We try to find the harbour, where we could take the ferry to Robben Island. WE don’t even need to mention, that we didn’t find any harbour. Well, to be honest we found a harbour (you just go down by the see, right?) but the construction work inside and around the harbour were so immense, that we just couldn’t get near it. After we had driven up and down the same road three times and made several unnecessary u-turns, we decided, that the island won’t go anywhere and we’ll go there on another day. Then we moved on towards Rust en Vreugd,  colonnial house from the 18^th century. I was hoin to see this temendously beautiful and fine colonnial mansion. In reality it was beautiful, but a bit plain. The garden was much more exciting, this overgrown wild thing.

 The house called Rust en Vreugd („Rest and Joy“) was built for Willem Cornelis Boer c.1777-1778. French ornitoloogist, artist and traveller  Francois le Vallant undertook expeditions to the Easthern and Northern Cape and afterwards displayed the specimens he had collected on his travels to Rust en Vreugd, temporily turning the house into a natural history muuseum. 

The first dog we met on the street - Zack in Green Point

I wanted to go to the local market and go about the neighbourhood, but Silvia was more careful and thought that maybe this is not the area to walk in by yourself. Besides we were famished. Silvia found a restaurant named Gold in a travel brochure, that served African cuisine. It turned out to be a popular restaurant, so popular in fact that you have to book a table in advance. WE got one for the evening and until then we decided to go walk around in the Waterkant district. Silvia remembered that there was supposed to be some kind of interesting bar. Unfortunately it was already closed. Instead of that we found a very cozy little coffee shop.

City Center. Backpakers live in the most beautiful houses. 

There was a nice coffee- shop in this very old house.

Our journey back to the restaurant urns out to be a bit tricky, because in the meantime traffic jams have started to spring up everywhere (a football game between South Africa and Nigeria) and it takes us some time to get there.

Traffic jam in the middle of the junction. And the steering wheel is still in the wrong side. Help!!!

We wait for our menu and peek at a strange poster introducing African kitchen that is lying on our table. It seems a bit funny that under African cuisine, there are also dishes from south and central Africa, as well as Maroccan, Tunesian and Egyptian. We were just talking about how we certianly won’t order those when the first meals arrive. It turns out the poster was our menu and with 14 dishes the tried to serve us the tastes of the whole continent. A bit disappointing (sort of like someone advertised local food in Norway and tried to give you Ukrainian), but it was all very tasty.

Menu

Entertainement was also part of the restaurant and it was very humorous.

Silvia (on her blog): In the restaurant they served us entertainment as a side dish. I have always been the sort of person, who doesn’t like when turists gather someplace where indiginous people (actually all metropolitan people the same as those tourists) dance and sing while they stare and film. However, the dancing and singing was wonderful and south-africans have such a good nature and humour that they do it happily, eventhough they are entertaining stupid tourists in the progress. The whole thing was made even better when the incredibly rythmic south-african youngsters grabbed two white man-noodles to dance with them, who were as awkward and wooden as me without any limbs. I almost choked on my Tunesian chickenwings. It is not nice to laugh at other people, but what do you do when it’s funny? The tip of the iceberg was when another European, bald and bulky, had to mimic the same dance as a local dancer. He did so up until the local dancer did a somersault, just for laughs. The tourist didn’t think himself any worse and tried to do a somersault. Seeing this, the dancer rushed to the man and tried to get him up from his position (you know, that there wouldn’t be an accident and the foreigner wouldn’t sue). Baldheaded European guy thought the dancer was trying to help him and tried to somersault over him. Very persistantly he tried, but with his weight and the dancer’s “help” he didn’t suceed. Mum laughed so hard she cried a little.

Next day we drive to Cape Point. Our road goes through Muzenberg, Fish Hoek and Simon’s Town. We ahh and ohh, but don’t stop. Our destination is Cape Point and before that no stopping.

It is like Norway again. 

 We arrive at Cape Point national park and lookie-loo – the landscape is uncannily similar to that of Nordkap. 

All the time warned of the monkeys, but we did not see any.

On the other side of the Globe. 1 week and 1 day ago in Nordkap, now in Cape Point.

What are those?

Is this our new home?

Our new home from the inside.

The door of our new home.

 Seaview.

On the window of our new home - how much could this cost?

Every car in the parking lot is white, how can we find ours?

We also go to the Cape of Good Hope and on a beautifully white sandy beach. 

We decided to take a smilira picture to the one my and dad took 14 years ago in a white beach in South Africa. As there is no one except a few ostriches around we put the camera on the hood of the car and put on the timer. I run to my mumto get the picture and gravity does its job and the camera falls down on the ground. I hope to God that the camera is okay. Of course it is not. The screen is broken and green – you can’t see anything. It takes pictures though. I curse myself and this weak camera and from then on take all my pictures with my phone. Maybe we have time to repair it here in Cape Town – we won’t be buying a new one because this “old” one is only a few weeks old. 

Ostrich (actually an emu) didn't help us.

Fatal picture.

 and our camera after taking it. 

From there we go back to Simon’s Town to hunt some penguins. Alright, it’s far from hunting, most what we can do is look at them from afar. They are very cute, especially when they try to get out of the water. They can only do it when they ride the wave into the beach, but sometimes another wave comes from behind and takes them back ito the water. They are also cute when they sneeze, which they do often and just like cats. Interesting facts about pengus: 1. They sneeze out salt from their noses, which is left there from drinking seawater; 2. They can swim up to 20 km/h if they hungriness for fish gets to great.

Won't be boring you with thousands of pictures of penguins. You have to see them yourself.

The magical fairytale houses and interiors of Simon's Town. The writer Rudyard Kipling used to live in this town and gets his ideas from here.

Able seaman just nuicance R.N. 1.april 1937 – 1. april 1944. This famous great dane was guardian and friend to naval ratings during World War II. Hei s remembered with affection.

I had to pay a big fee to Hertz for this picture (the tire and hub-cap). Maybe someone would like to buy this picture so I could pay my bill.