CPT + ZimZam

Just FYI - I started writing this as soon as I got to Cape Town, and planned on making my Sunday (22-Feb) deadline but then Chad arrived and our wifi was sketchy.  So basically, it's all Chad's fault that I'm a week late.

So I talked to a looooot of people about driving in Cape Town, and they all assured me that I would be totally fine, no big deal.  I would equate driving in Cape Town to driving in San Francisco - which I can handle.  No Problem.  Except I'm driving a stick shift.  On the left side of the road.  And there are hills.  EVERYWHERE.  I was supposed to check into my place at 2pm.  My plane landed at 10:30am and I figured I'd cruise around, jam to some summer songs, and enjoy the day.  Instead, I drove straight to the house, begged the sweet German lady that I'm staying with to let me park my car in front of her house, and hoofed it around the neighborhood for the rest of the day.

Tuesday was a very, very lazy day for me.  Usually when I'm on vacation I'm constantly on the go because I only have a short period of time to see anything and everything (another trait my mother so graciously passed along to me).  I was in Cape Town for 10 days, and going back for another 4 at the end of my trip, so I didn't feel too guilty about sleeping in and recovering from my Namibian heat stroke.  I did walk along Kloof Street that has all kinds of restaurants and shops, but other than that I was a total bum.

On Wednesday, I walked down to the Victoria and Albert Waterfront and purchased my 2-day double decker tour bus ticket!!!!  Then I planted myself on the top deck for the remainder of the day.  Literally.  I got off once to have lunch in Camps Bay, but that's it.  I'm an avid fan of the City Sightseeing double decker tour company, like they should probably pay me for publicity.  I've taken their tours in New York City, London, Barcelona, and now Cape Town.  They say they are in over 100 cities worldwide.  Challenge = accepted.

Anyways, I took the long tour around the peninsula and learned so much along the way.  During Apartheid (which in Afrikaans means "apart-hood), there were 4 classes - White, Black, Indian, and Colored.  Your class determined several things, one of which being where you were allowed to live, whites closest to the city center and blacks/colored furthest out in the rural areas.  Many of the blacks and colored wanted jobs in the city and dreamed of education, so they would travel to and from the city each day in hopes of both.  The travel was long and costly, so many "informal settlements" or illegal townships/shanty towns developed on the outskirts of town.  Some of these townships still exist today, one of which is called Imizamo Yethu.  It is crazy, because this shanty town is nestled on the slopes of the mountains and there are very nice neighborhoods adjacent to the area.

Entrance of Imizamo Yethu

This is the Constantia wine country, and it's just a few miles away from Imizamo Yethu

The weather on Wednesday was absolutely beautiful, except for the fog that just seemed to sit at the top of Table Mountain Park all day.  This is pretty common in the summertime, and they call it the Tablecloth...very fitting.

Camps Bay and the 12 Apostles in the fog

Thursday, I jumped back on the bus, but I actually did get off this time and visit Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (SO beautiful), Hout Bay (and old fishing community), and Camps Bay for a little nap in the sun...

Camps Bay and the 12 Apostles in the clear :)

Cape Town at the base of Table Mountain.  The shadow on the city is the mountain 

View of Devil's Peak from Kirstenbosch

Oh HI!

Old fishing boat in Hout Bay

Found this little guy swimming in Hout Bay

Viva!

Friday I moved from my little place in Tamboerskloof to a loft in Greenspoint, closer the the V&A Waterfront.  I did some laundry, and waited for my boy to get here!  I got to the airport super early and successfully dumped my stick shift VW for an automatic...thank goodness.  Chad got it at around 11 on Friday night, and as all 27 year-olds do, we went straight to bed.  I cut him some slack seeing as he did just travel for about 30 hours...

Saturday morning we headed to Table Mountain.  The sign said that it was "very cold" on top, and naturally we disregarded the clear warning.  It was freezing and verrrrrry windy.  We made a quick loop, took some very beautiful photos, downed some coffee, and headed back down...buncha wimps.  To warm up, we walked down Long Street to the market in search of souvenirs (successful trip, I might say) and then headed home to get ready for dinner.  I checked my email to find out that our shark diving trip we had planned for the next day had been cancelled due to bad weather.  Secretly, I was thanking the big man upstairs, but swimming with the sharks was the one thing Chad wanted to do while in South Africa, so after some scrambling we were able to get booked for the next day's trip (hooray).  We had a great dinner, and hit the town afterwards....which left us spending the entire next day napping on Camps Bay beach...   

Steepest cable car I've ever seen

Beautiful Cape Town

12 Apostles

Chad picking out his dinner 

happy boy

(too many) after dinner drinks...

Camps Bay with my babe

Monday (23rd) was our last morning in Cape Town, so we had some breakfast and headed to Gansbaai, about 2 hours from Cape Town.  Gansbaai is a little town that is basically on the map for whale watching and shark diving trips.  Unfortunately, there aren't any whales around this time of year, but lucky for us the sharks are still there...

Notice there are people in that cage...

What I thought would be our last photo together

this is real life

but first, let me take a selfie

After our 1st near death experience of the trip, we headed to Franschhoek.  Franschhoek is one of the smaller cities in the South Africa Winelands.  I have a friend from work that lives there, and insisted that we go and stay for at least a night on our trip.  So we did.  And I am so glad we did.  It was absolutely gorgeous, and the wine was not only delicious but SO cheap.  It took everything I had not to buy another bag just to fill up with vino.  The area is known for Sauvingnon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, and Pinotage - which we had never heard of, but it is a varietal created in 1925 that is a cross between Piont Noir and Cinsaut and it is deeeeelicious.  Franschhoek is also known for it's cuisine.  So basically, we ate and drank until we couldn't eat and drink anymore for the next 2 days.  We also took a trip up to Langebaan and had lunch at the Die Strandloper, a beautiful little restaurant on the beach.  By lunch I mean a 10 COURSE MEAL.  It was everything we had not to go straight into a food coma.  We spent our last night in Stellenbosch, which is also in the winelands, but we were all wined out and sat on the balcony eating pizza instead.  

First stop, Moreson

Another from Moreson

3rd stop, Dieu Donne Estate

4th stop The Grand Provence

annnnnnd it's time to go home...

Strandloper between courses 4 and 5...we had a break

Course 9..."crayfish" LOBSTER!

We left Stellenbosch super early to make our 7am flight to Victoria Falls!  The first fail of our planning of this trip was that we booked all of our flights before actually figuring out what we were doing.  At first, we were going to go from Cape Town to Mozambique for a couple of days on the beach, but then we decided to go to Victoria Falls instead.  Victoria Falls is on the Zambezi River, which is the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.  The Victoria Falls Airport is in Zimbabwe, so we booked our flight there.  BUT after doing a little more research, we decided to stay on the Zambia side at the Royal Livingstone (which is phenomenal, and I 1000% recommend it) and there just so happens to be an airport in the town of Livingstone.  Whatever, we got there.

So after 2 planes (+ 1 delay), 2 taxis and 3 customs lines/checkpoints we arrived at the Royal Livingstone and it felt like a dream.  If any of you have seen the movie the Great Gatsby, it felt like that.  Magical.  I should have been wearing a very fancy dress and Chad in a 3-piece suit.  There was an open-air courtyard entrance into the perfectly groomed grounds with zebras grazing and the Zambezi River in the background.  The receptionists led us to the lounge where we checked in with peach iced tea and a hand massage (probably to ease the bill).  That night we went on a sunset cruise where we saw the most wonderful site (for me) to date.  An elephant family leaving the river after their bath...    

Entrance Courtyard

SO gorgeous 

O. M. G.

Oh hey hippos.

Pretttttty

The next morning we got up and took the most amazing helicopter ride we've ever taken.  I don't like helicopter rides.  I don't care where it is, I don't like them.  I'm not the greatest flier, but I'm worse when it comes to helicopters.  Which isn't too good for my job, seeing as I'm about to move offshore in a few months, but anyhoo....this ride was perfect.  15 minutes of beautiful views of both Zimbabwe and Zambia.  It was wonderful.  

After the ride, we had a trip to Livingstone Island booked.  When we booked our trip to Vic Falls and started doing research, Chad was pretty bummed because the water was going to be too high to swim in Devil's Pool, which is a "safe spot" in the river that you can swim in when the water is low.  Since this is high water season, there is not much you can do in the river right at the falls.  BUT leave it to my man to find a way to get right up to the death-defying edge of the river, looking 110 meters down at the chasim below.  We were able to walk along the edge and take a dip in Angel's Pool...I liked the name of that better anyway :)

After our swim, we walked into the Victoria Falls viewing area, and again, were amazed by this place.  

On the way back from our walk, Chad was being loud a goofy (typical).  I calmly explained that HE was the reason that we hadn't seen the giraffes that the other guests had seen around the area, and we probably wouldn't even get a glimpse.  Not even 30 seconds later, this happened....

They say, all good things must come to an end, and now I believe it.  Let the mix-ups and travel woes begin. Want to test your relationship?  Travel to Africa.  Lucky for me, I have one pretty good man...  

We were so sad to leave the Royal Livingstone, but were getting pretty excited to get to Kenya and then BOOM…our travel saga began.  When we were booking our flights from Vic Falls to Nairobi it looked like it was going to take us a day and a half to get from point A to point B.  Naturally, I wasn't going to stand for that so I booked us on Air Zimbabwe from Vic Falls to Johannesburg and then South African Airlines from Johannesburg to Nairobi - HA outsmarted those airlines.  So we get to the airport at 9AM for our 11AM flight to find out that Air Zimbabwe has cancelled our flight, awesome.  But no worries, they booked us on South African Airlines but we would only have 30 minutes to make our connection.  Just kidding, they booked us on British Airways and there was no way we could make our connection.  Cool.  So I start pacing and sweating, and Chad finds the most helpful woman in the world who booked us on a flight out of the Livingstone (Zambia) airport that will get us into Nairobi at 9:30PM, perfect.  So then we make the trip back across the borders to get to the airport, and 3 taxis later we are in the Kenya Airways meeting Timothy to get our tickets.  He tells us the total amount (I died) and then we hand over the credit card and he goes ohhhhhh, we only accept cash.  Um WHAT?  Have we traveled back to the 1950's?? The answer is yes.  We tried every trick in the book - contacting travel agents (it's Sunday and no one works), booking online (3 hours prior is too late for that), and begging - offering to leave my credit card with them - ANYTHING.  About 30 minutes later, we just hit the ATM and use every credit and debit card we had to get the heck out of Zambia and scrambled up enough Kwacha to pay our way.  

What a relief.  I finally stopped sweating and my heart calmed slightly.  So we go to check our bags and the ladies are mumbling to themselves about Chad's passport.  He doesn't have any empty pages left...okayyy, so???  So we sit.  And wait.  Finally a lady comes back, Chad goes to the counter the get things sorted, and I get back to writing my blog.  After about 20 minutes, he's not back and I look up to see his red little face - not good.  Apparently, you have to have 2 empty pages to even get into Kenya.  Period.  No if, ands, or buts.  The airline will get fined if they allow passengers with less than one page on the plane.  There was no bribe that we could have made to get past this one.  Kenya was out of the picture.  

Soooo after getting over the initial shock that we weren't going to the Serengeti and wouldn't have breakfast with giraffes, we started planning how to get back to Johannesburg and to Kruger National Park to see some animals.  We spent the night in Livingstone and are headed to Johannesburg today with hopes of getting to Kruger National Park tomorrow.  Fingers crossed I will have some photos of the Big 5 (lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and leopard) in no time :)

Note:  I posted this before leaving the hotel.  When we got to the airport we had yet another scare with the passport situation.  After talking to 3 different airline reps, and realizing that Chad already has a South African visa that is valid until May...we got out tickets.  Thank the good Lord above!

And DON'T worry, we are fine and determined to have a great rest of the trip.  Until next week....xoxoxoooo!