Our Travel Blog

As many of you know, we are not great city explorers and (most) museums don’t interest us, so today was to be a lazy wander around the suburbs day with an ulterior motive or two.

We decided to go further afield from the hotel for breakfast as their prices were a little steep; we settled for a Chinese run pavement patio place. The food was good and the prices far more reasonable. The one thing we miss over here is the bottomless coffee concept of home at breakfast time, ah the sacrifices we make when traveling!

Back to the hotel to collect our stuff and finalise the route, then off we went to Kings Cross station where we needed to top up the Opal cards before heading out. Lyn had found a crafts store she wanted to visit, and I had been put in contact with a company that specialises in parts for the MGB. A project before next summer is to rebuild the carburetors, this company had the required kits for less than half the price I’d have to pay to get them from the USA. Conveniently their location was about two train stops from where Lyn wanted to go.

It took about 40 minutes to get there, with a 15 minute walk through a residential area at the end. One thing I have noticed here is there seem to be many ethnic areas rather then the more integrated society we are used to in Ottawa. This are was very much an Arab area with the shops selling produce to match. So far, even in the ‘burbs, we haven’t seen any new housing areas, most of the houses appear to have been built in the 50’s or 60’s. There are some apartment buildings going up, but nowhere near as fast as we are used to back home. It’ll be interesting to see if their population is growing or declining.

Once I had my goodies we trekked back to the station and headed off to out next destination. The store Lyn wanted was in a large shopping centre so we got to check that out as well. Lunch was first on the agenda so it was off to the 5* (not) food court. Lyn then spent a while in the stores while I played on the phone. Given the cheapness of data over here for the cell phones it seemed a waste not to use it.

After shopping was finished we headed back on the train for our final journey, one disadvantage for tourists using the Opal card is that any unused money cannot be refunded. This morning we were in the position of having $7 on the card but needed $9 for the trips so we had to top up. Topping up left us with $8 on the card at the end of the day. Opal will not make $8 profit off each of us, we’ll leave the cards at reception for some deserving tourists!

Back at the hotel we lounged around for a while, and then headed out to try to find a local geocache. Again we had no luck, but we couldn’t do too much searching as there were a lot of people around.

The geocache was centred around one of Sydney’s many sculptures, this one was the El Alamein Fountain designed by Robert Woodward as a memorial to the Australian Imperial Forces 9th Division and commemorates the Battle of El Alamein, Egypt, in World War II.

Around the edge of the fountain were a number of Australian Ibis, two of them appeared to be acting aggressively towards each other, but after a while we discovered one was a (large) chick, still been fed by parents.

In the background of the picture above is another sculpture, Angled Wheels of Fortune.

Tomorrow we head off to Brisbane for a couple of days.

Today’s plan was to head west to the Blue Mountains. The weather wasn’t as warm as yesterday and it was overcast. The forecast looked promising and the clouds were due give-way to some sun.

We headed down to breakfast, it was just warm enough to eat “al fresco’ so we had a repeat of yesterdays breakfast, but given the size of the sausages we cut down from 2 to 1.

Next off we made our way to Kings Cross station in search of an Opal card. The transport system here appears to be cashless with all transactions being conducted by tap cards. Surprisingly the transport company does not sell Opal cards, luckily the newsagents in the station did! One good thing about the system is that on Sunday the maximum amount debited from the cards balance is $2.70 Aus or $2.50 Cdn (aprrox. 25c US!!!) Considering it was to be a 2 hour trip each way this was fantastic value for money. Other days of the week the maximum amount debited is $15 which means you can use all the city buses and trains that you want and not spend more than $15. Pretty good value. Anyway that was the good news part.

The train was comfortable, but the track was all welded so no comforting clankedy-clank sounds as we traveled. The suburbs seemed to go on forever, but we finally broke out into the countryside and the hills, unfortunately the further west we went, the lower the cloud got. By the time we god to our destination at Katoomba we were well into the cloud. This was bad news as the plan was to take a bus and aerial tram tour around the area for its views. Given the visibility (or lack thereof) we decided not to splurge out on tickets, rather we walked around the town.

We also tried for our first Geocache of the trip, but we couldn’t it! Good news 1 Bad news 2!

We found a “bombed” tree at one of the churches, if you don’t know what a bombed tree is then e-Mail Lyn.

We stopped for lunch and as we looked out of the window we became convinced that the weather was not going to clear, so we made the decision to head back to Sydney. A disappointing trip, but at least it only cost us $2.70 each. You can’t win them all!!

Headed off for our final breakfast this morning. Lyn had done most of the packing last night, for some reason she wouldn’t let me help her! Last night for dinner we sampled some local meats, I had crocodile, Lyn had warthog ribs. Previously we had tried ostrich and gembok. We survived.

After leaving our bags at reception we took a taxi to the waterfront as we couldn’t be bothered to navigate the downtown traffic AND find somewhere to park! Our destination to day was Robben Island. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, some people say it’s a must do trip, others say don’t bother and yet others find it very emotional. The history of the island goes back many centuries and has been used variously for defence of Cape Town, a leper colony and more recently a prison for black, coloured and Asian male political prisoners. I had planned to describe it a little more, but it is one of those places I don’t think I could do justice to in a written description. You’ll have to come visit it yourself.

After we returned to the mainland we did some last minute shopping (Paul and Amanda, enjoy what little peace you can….. there may be very little after we meet the kids!!!).

We headed back to the hotel, the cab fare was 100 Rand on the outbound trip but the return trip was in rush hour and I saw the meter climbing quicker than my final 120 Rand liked. I told the driver I was running short on cash, but he said no problem we’d make it with change to spare…. He was right!

Having seen the traffic on the highway to the airport in the last few days we decide to leave in plenty of time, as it turned out we made good time after an initial delay where two highways converged.

We are now in the lounge with about an hour to go until we board, so this is just about the end of another great trip. We will be back? Yes we hope to be. Hopefully next time I do a better job of the planning and we get to do the train trip up to Victoria Falls. Despite all the overt signs of security e.g. wall, electric fences and guard dogs at many houses we always felt safe wherever we were. I believe as long as you apply a modicum of common sense, S. Africa is no more dangerous than many other places. So now you know!

The survey I mentioned yesterday is:

Where should we go next year?

A.   S. America

B.  European Riverboat Cruise

C.  Australian Gold Coast

I think I have the answer already but it would be interesting to here what you think.

That’s all for this trip, we’re off to Alabama again in the New Year, and another adventure next fall.

The weather seems to be slowly declining, dull and overcast this morning with the threat of rain. Cape Town is in desperate need of rain, the reservoirs are only at 25% of their normal level and getting lower. Water rationing is in force and shower times restricted to 1 (one) minute!

After breakfast we headed south towards the naval base of Simon’s Town which served as our marker for penguin country which is just south of there.

This area is home to the African Penguin, whose numbers have been decreasing rapidly over the last 100 years due mainly to pollution destroying their food chain.

I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Below are a couple of pictures of Mum and two chicks.

The guy above is in the process of molting, this happens once a year and replaces all of the old feathers for new ones with better insulation. During this period, which lasts 21 days the penguins can’t enter the water so they go on an eating binge beforehand to store up their energy.

While wandering around the area we came across a colony of Rock Dassies and their young. Believe it or not these guys are related to the elephant family.

Youngsters

Mum feeding Babies.

After a coffee stop (again without Carrot Cake!), we headed back around the coast to Stellenbosch.

As we approached Stellenbosch we entered a huge area if vineyards, this is prime African wine country.

Stellenbosch is an old Dutch settlement where their architecture can still be seen.

It’s hard to explain, but the face in the picture above looked like a piece if rusted iron sculpture superimposed on a map of Africa. I couldn’t work out what it was meant to represent. As soon as I saw it through the viewfinder the face jumped out as clear as anything. Weird, but effective!

Lunch Spot

Although we had a couple of sprinkles of rain it was not enough to affect us, and certainly not enough to help with the drought.

Tomorrow our flight leaves at 21:20, so we are able to leave our bags at the hotel and we’ll get a taxi to the waterfront and catch the ferry across to Robbens Island. Depending on what time we get to the airport, and the state of their WiFi there may or may not be a blog tomorrow. I don’t intend to do a blog when we are in England as there will be nothing “touristy” going on. I will do a final entry in the next few days covering Robbens Island and maybe even a survey!

After breakfast we headed off to find the most Southern point in Africa. Many people think this is at the Cape of Good Hope, but it is actually further east along the coast at Cape Agulhas.

As it was a reasonably long journey we headed out of town on the highway with the intent on returning via the back roads if time permitted. We drove through a mountain pass about 1000ft above sea level into a fertile valley area where the was plenty of wheat, apples and grapes growing.

This fertile area carried on for a long time, we then left the freeway and headed south down to Cape Agulhas. We again stopped for coffee, but NO cake this time! We stopped a few times on the way for geocaches as I needed 5 more to reach 500. I managed to work it out so that the 500th find would be at the southernmost point of the continent.

Once we reached Cape Agulhas it was a bit of a mess as they are building a new road and building at the site. The road is being built of interlock paving, there were about six guys laying a gazillion interlock stones by hand, not a machine in sight!

When it came to finding the magic cache we thought a disaster had befallen us, we couldn’t find the cache! Luckily there was a log entry on the site that suggested if we looked from a slightly different direction then all would be revealed….. it was!

We planned a rout back across country via Hermanus which is a good whale watching area, on the way we passed the elusive ostrich.

The coastline at Hermanus:

This is the closest we got to seeing a whale:

You’ll have to read further to see what we didn’t expect to see!

Different place for breakfast this morning, at 2300 last night this place was heaving with students from the nearby Uni, this morning there was only us there!

Today’s plan was to drive up the coast north of the city to visit a few beaches and coves. In my mind I had built this trip up to be a coastal drive between small fishing villages; I was wrong on a couple of things, the coastal road had an inability to get near to the coast, and the small coves and fishing villages were obviously a figment of my imagination. Nevertheless, we did pass a nuclear power station.

The first few miles of the drive was spent in fog and low cloud, table mountain often disappeared  from sight.

We stopped at a small cafe for coffee and a piece of cake to sustain us, well the carrot cake was probably big enough to feed half of the town, needless to say there would be no lunch today! The cafe was quite funky with a lot of artsy stuff around as well as numerous birds.

After our somewhat oversized snack we diverted off the “coastal” road a few times to get down to the sea. Our first stop was Yzerfontein.

It looked as though they were preparing for some boat racing. The boats were inflatables like a Zodiac, but with a catamaran type hull and large engine. The could certainly move.

A cottage along the sea front

After leaving Yzerfontein we came across a sight we weren’t expecting.

These camels were just grazing at the side of the road. It appears they were introduced from N.Africa many decades ago and continue to live in the Cape area.

Next stop was Langebaan, a breezy seaside town with plenty of large rollers coming off the Atlantic (which by the way was no warmer today than yesterday) . Kite flying, kite surfing and paddle board surfing seemed to be the sport of the day.

We made a few stops for geocaches finding 4; this brought Lyn’s total up to 400 found — well done!

On the way home we spotted these two guys in a field, as usual we are looking to identify them.

Tomorrow we head off to the southernmost point of S. Africa.