Arrival in Cape Town
Good day, February 27th, and it’s a Friday. So I was all excited to make it to Cape Town for the very first time, and Gert-Jan opted to take it easy a little bit, have a bit of a rest day, at least the first part. So I went on my own, and to get that all figured out, I found on the way out across from the Melkbos Strand entry on the main road, there’s an Omul Bakery which has lots of pies, as in, or sausage rolls and what have you, the kind of old kind of Dutch stuff. So they, they kept some of those good things.
Meeting the Zimbabwean Workers
But before I even got there, across the street from where we stayed was a group of guys with truck, and they were maintenance people for, uh, the neighborhood. So they go to certain houses and do whatever it takes to keep the houses maintained. Well, as it turned out, they were all from Zimbabwe. And that’s the kind of thing that I’ve encountered quite a bit, that there is lots of people from many different countries working in South Africa. Not just the South Africans. And they were a very enthusiastic group. And when they, when they realized the, the website on the car, they right away looked it up, and on my car that is, and want to take pictures. And, and really, really fun. Some of them wanted to come along for the rest of the journey.
The Beautiful Drive to Cape Town
So after my breakfast at the bakery, I made it to Cape Town. And it’s a generous entry because the Table Mountain is in the distance behind Cape Town when you come from the north. And good enough, it was visible on this beautiful day. But I wasn’t too much into taking pictures, so I didn’t take that opportunity on that— not on that day. And then you go around the bay, and Table Mountain keeps being a very significant piece of it. And traffic is really kind of relaxed in South Africa. Of course, one drives on the left side. One should not forget that. And it’s just an amazing, beautiful ride when you have come across the whole continent to get to your, at least for now, endpoint.
Dutch Consulate Visit
Then in town, I found a building that has Mandela and Aboto’s pictures on it. Really high up and the road goes under the building. It’s just really quite an impressive day. And then I get to the consulate and that all worked out really easy. They had told me I could just stop by and did not make an appointment, need to make an appointment. Also the fact that I was not a South African resident I could still get the passport applied for there. And this time I applied for a business passport, which has a few more pages. Ah, you don’t know what’s coming still. And the lady was very helpful and friendly. All it takes is a lot of money, and she thought that I should have it within a week, which really saves a lot of trouble because I don’t have to pick it up any place else because I had, uh, another place in Durban in mind, but apparently the Dutch consulate is no longer there, so that would not have worked anyway.
Meeting Fellow Travelers and Evening Plans
So then it was time to do a few things for the car. I had to inquire a little bit and ran into some people that had a Toyota that they rented. They were from Portugal and they, they’ve been coming to the south part of Africa every year for a few months and renting a vehicle all the time. So this time they decided they better go buy one. So that, that was a fun, fun conversation. Then we, uh, I made my way back to, uh, Gedeon, who ended up being able to go to swim in the Atlantic Ocean because we are still on the Atlantic side. And he made some good contacts there with people that are lifeguards, and we found a place for dinner that night, which was nice. It was a trattoria, so Italian, and that was about as good as it gets. So this was really fun to be able to walk to dinner and, and get the, get a sense of the place. It’s especially pretty much a touristy place. I imagine that a lot of people just have a place there for their downtime. And plenty of places for staying. Its own little community. And it’s about half an hour north of Cape Town.
