Daily Archive for February 6th, 2007

warm, sunny Cape Town

Published
by
Steve
on February 6, 2007
in Travel
. 0 Comments

So, yes, I am in South Africa. Today I’ve been chilling out. They let me sleep until almost 10 am and we sat down to a nice big breakfast. Since then, I’ve been on the computer writing blog posts, adding picture metadata to flickr and researching a bit what I want to do in South Africa. I haven’t and hadn’t planned a single thing before traveling here. I just knew I wanted to come here.

Yesterday was pretty amazing and I was running on excitement and adrenaline all day long as I hadn’t had any real sleep in 3 days! The Cape Town airport is pretty quaint, but very modern and certainly not the smallest airport I’ve encountered on my travels (the smallest was in Seville, Spain). Nazma and her brother Nur picked me up and brought me swiftly back to her house. The plan for the day was Table Mountain and a tour of Robben Island Prison.

on the Robben Island Ferry

I settled in a bit at Nazma’s house, got the lay of the land and met the family. Her sister Nazli and brother Nur - both younger than Nazma, her mom Fowzia and Nazli’s husband Imran (Nazli and Imran are newlyweds). We all sat down to a nice, big breakfast of muesli, yogurt, fried eggs, juice, and other assorted yummies. At this point, I was more hungry than anything and was a bit numb from the plane ride. Shortly after breakfast, Nazma’s cousin Ferial, Ferial’s husband Azad and their 1.5 year old daughter Sumaya, arrived to transport and accompany Nazma, Nazli, Imran and I us to Table Mountain.

Table Mountain is pretty much a part of Cape Town, i.e. you don’t have to drive out of town to get to it. It’s right there. It was about a 25-30 minute drive I think. The mountain was fairly busy, the que for tickets wasn’t that bad though. It was very sunny. I was already feeling the UV burning my skin standing in line for the cableway, and I hadn’t put on any sunscreen. I made it my mission to find sunscreen ASAP and cover myself up. That was no problem at the mountain-top shop and I bought four postcards, too. The cableway was pretty cool. It is an amazingly steep climb - the cable is 1200 meters and the mountain (at it’s highest) is 1085 meters. The cable way looks like it’s at the mountains lowest point, but the mountain is pretty flat (hence the name table, eh?) so I’d guess the height is still around 1000 meters for the cableway. What I’m trying to say is it’s like a 45-degree incline. The ride up was impressive - the cable car has a rotating base, so everyone on it gets a 360-degree view and there’s not a bad place to stand in the car. The top of Table Mountain was well done and very touristy. A restaurant, curio shop, nice bathrooms, lots of paves walks near the cable car station and paths all over the top of the mountain. Beautiful views …

DSC_0118

After we were all satisfied with our time at Table Mountain, we headed back down the cable way and waited for our ride, as Azad had dropped us all off. We were a bit early, and got to just chill out and enjoy the breeze. It was quite nice to just sit there and I even got a little snooze in. Azad picked us up and we were headed down the long hill to lunch. Unfortunately, though, their Chrysler mini-van had been and was having engine problems, and the van essentially konked out part-way down the hill. We had to pull over and Azad tried to restart the engine to no avail. Being on a hill, we coasted down to a gas station, where Imran and I had to get out and push the van into the station. Oddly enough, the van runs just fine if there is more than 1/4 tank full of gas. So, Azad got the van to the pump, filled it up and we were off. The car problems ate into our lunch-eating time and we decided to just head back to Nazma’s house. Azad and Ferial dropped us off. Imran, Nazli, Fowzia and I had to make it to the waterfront around 4:30 to catch the Robben Island ferry.

We made it in plenty of time. After locating an ATM machine and withdrawing 200 ZAR, which is about 27.80 USD, we found the ferry. Nazli had already bought tickets, so we just had to get on. It was a quick, somewhat tumultuous ride, we arrived at the harbor on Robben Island. I didn’t really know what to expect, visiting a prison. I don’t think I have ever visited a prison. My perception of them are vile, decrepit places where the scum of the earth are sent to suffer. I knew Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for a long time, but I had no idea where. And, I quickly learned that Robben Island was like no other prison in the world. Not because it was nice. Not at all, but because of the reasons the political prisoners were kept there and the treatment they received during apartheid. One of the first things we were shown and told on the island bus tour was that the prisoners were treated worse than dogs. And given the conditions they had to live it, this was certainly true. Rather than posting more info and pics about the island prison here, take a look at my flickr set where I’ve added descriptions and info to photos. Overall, it was an incredible (seriously, unbelievable) trip and one I am really glad I got to do and see. Interestingly enough, Nazma’s mom, Fowzia, had lived here in SA quite a few years before ever going to the prison. I’m glad she got to go with us!

The four of us had dinner at Nando’s, a sorta quick-food eatery. It’s like fast food, because you order at the cash register, but the food is really good and fresh and they bring it to your table like a sit-down restaurant. Since we all kinda skipped lunch, we were hungry. At this point, I’ve thrown my vegetarianism out the window. That, and they have some really good chicken here in Cape Town! We ate up, headed back to the house. I did my laundry and tried to stay awake. After I had everything hung out to dry and showered and spent too much time in front of the computer for how tired I was, I finally went to sleep. I can’t remember the last time I slept that good. That quality of sleep is rare, and I almost think I need to have more intense experiences like I have had over the last weekend so I can have more sleep like that. It only comes with a combination of sleep deprivation and activity, but it’s almost worth it!

the long trip to Cape Town

Published
by
Steve
on February 6, 2007
in Travel
. 0 Comments

whew! It has been quite a weekend. The biggest traveling weekend of my life, I guess. My last update was from Porto, Portugal where I had made all my rail connections up to that point and was in the airport waiting to fly to the UK. The flight to Stansted was uneventful. A quick two-hour jaunt. But, that was unfortunately where the fun ended.

I hadn’t researched the connection between Stansted and Manchester very well. I thought I had seen there was a decent connection by train, but when I inquired about it at the airport around midnight when I arrived, there was no train until around 7 am. Quite a few hours from then. So, I tried the bus. There was a bus leaving in 30 minutes that went to Manchester via Birmingham. The fact that it arrived in Manchester at 7 am didn’t sink in until after I had purchased the 34 GBP tickets and was getting ready to board. I was about to travel all fucking night on bus. Fucking great. That means no sleep. Which means the overnight flight the next night means no sleep either. Well, I resigned myself to just feeling pretty crappy when I arrived into Cape Town.

The bus ride was pretty shitty, really. The buses aren’t as nice as the ones I rode on in Spain and Portugal. They are more expensive too, go figure. They were packed, which never seemed to happen in the southern European countries. And, to top it off, a very drunk chap sat next to me, positively reeking of alcohol. Even though, when he first sat down, I didn’t think he seemed that drunk. He was pretty subdued, and it wasn’t that he was obnoxious at all. He just stank. And didn’t make much sense. And was a pretty pathetic person, I thought. Nice guy though! … ;) I don’t have anything nice to say, so I’ll just cut this rant off now. Other than that, I just didn’t get more than 20 minutes of sleep at a time on the bus. Yikes.

So, I get to Manchester after a shitty, long-ass bus ride. I actually arrive at the airport around 6:45 am on February 3. My flight was scheduled to depart at 3:25 pm on February the 3. I had about 6 hours to kill … at the airport. Woo. Hoo. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but the only thing I really had to do was charge the iPod and buy some snacks. At this point, though, I had no idea the rest of the day was going to end up like it did.

Noon rolls around, and it was getting close to check-in time for my 3:25 flight. I meandered my sleepy-ass to the ticketing area to check in. And waited. And waited. Finally the flyglobespan folks showed up and started setting things up like they knew what they were doing and we were gonna check in soon. Things started up, and they were churning through the line. There had been a low grumble that had started from the second they started checking people in though.

We all checked our bags in and found out while doing so the flight was indeed delayed…

Until 6 am the next morning!

Holy crap! Now what do I do? I had already spent six friggin hours in this airport hoping I’d leave it within hours. Now I have to spend the night in it?

Dammit.

No, after all. I did not have to sleep in the airport. They were sorta on the ball and were saying they’d be putting anyone up in a hotel who doesn’t live close to the airport. (which was pretty much everyone.) We were to check in again for more information at 3 pm. I was still shitting anyway about that, because it was three more damn hours in the airport that I didn’t want to spend - especially knowing we were not going anywhere until at least tomorrow morning. I had no sleep the night before, and the night before that in Lagos, I had been up late and got up early. So, I really wasn’t running on much sleep by this time. Pretty much every time I sat down and put my head anywhere near a comfortable position, I was nodding off. No kidding. But I’d only nod off for 10 minutes before I’d completely open my eyes and wonder if my bags were still around. I was tired and a weary and a bit paranoid.

When 3 pm rolls around and we finally learn that the flight is officially delayed, they don’t give us ANY information. They only say that coaches (they don’t call them buses in England) would be arriving soon to take us to the hotel. I had a twinge of “oh shit” as I figured they were trucking us a ways down the road to a cheapie motel or something. It ended up not, that they were just taking us less than a mile to the Crown Royal hotel or something like that. It was a very short bus ride. We all waded through the cluster-fuck that was check in, although it had been pretty efficient looking back on it. We didn’t have to provide the hotel with any information whatsoever. We just showed our boarding card, said how many was in our party and they gave us a room number and a room key. Nice.

After all my whining, though, I was really, really, really looking forward to spending the night in a nice hotel. It meant I could shower and sleep, sleep, sleep. The airline and hotel had already scheduled two buffet dinners that evening for our dining pleasure. I signed up for the six o’clock spot, knowing it was a full two hours from then. I clambered to my room, threw my bags in the room, jumped in the shower and then thankfully and finally rested on clean sheets and fluffy pillow. I had a much needed nap and later had a completely unmentionable dinner.

I don’t remember when I saw our 1 am wake-up call and 3 am shuttle to the terminal on our schedule for the next day, but I do remember thinking it was ridiculous. They said our flight is a 6 am. Why get up a 1 am? We’d already checked our bags (though we all still had our bags), so that would save time. I was hoping wake us up at 3, pick us up at 4 and we could surely be off by 6 am. That was my sillyness, though. In actuality, that is almost what happened. In the middle of the night, while we were all sleeping, they changed our wake-up time to 3 am. I didn’t find out about this until after 3 am when I awoke and struggled to the lobby only to find they weren’t picking us up until 6 am! Sheez-a-holy-shit. So were aren’t leaving at 6 am. This was not going to be fun.

Back to the room. I was already dressed and ready to head out. Breakfast was at 5 am, which none of us knew until 4 am. Pickup was at 6 am. I flipped through the six BBC stations we could get on the telly and drifted through the ceefax service for a while until it was time to eat. I was starving and decided I’d eat whatever the hell they had, meat or not, processed, whatever. I ended up having my first full English breakfast: Eggs, toast, hashbrowns, sausages, bacon, baked beans, 1/2 a tomato and I think that was it.

Breakfast was over, everyone was milling around waiting, and finally the coaches showed up to take us back to the terminal. Time was a moot point to me at this juncture. I really didn’t care about anything but getting to South Africa. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t eavesdrop to find out the latest rumour, didn’t do anything but keep my head buried in my book (I read The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury. It was pretty good) get on the plane and fly. I was grumpy. Because, since we found out at like 7:35 our plane just landed, I knew were were in for another long day.

First they said the “engineer” was on board, checking things out and the first update would be at 9 am. At 9 am they told us to come back at noon. Around 12:45, with a new proposed departure time of 3:30, they re-opened the check-in process. We reluctantly gave them our bags.

And, it was a long day. The rest of my time in Manchester airport was pretty dull. I had a coffee. Read my book. Had lunch. Dozed off. Picked up my 7 GBP meal voucher. Read. Bought some snacks for the plane. Read. Called Nazma at 2:45 letting her know I actually had a new departure time. Read. And that was about it. All the reading was quite nice, really. But the plane didn’t take off until 4:30 pm. Essentially 25 hours late. We still had a long, long flight ahead of us.

Eleven hours and 40 minutes and a smooth ride later, we were touching down in Cape Town and we were all relieved.