South Africa

The superb tarmac in RSA made us both very depressed and the miserable weather didn’t help. We spent one night in Springbok en route to our final destination of Cape Town.

Our first view of Table Mountain cheered us up a bit and we were looking forward to the city life for a few days. We played Chris Rea “Road to Hell” as we covered the last 50kms.

We tried to stay in the same backpacker hostel as the Going Home group but they were full so stayed in a nearby colourful option called Deco Lodge. We had a fantastic pizza and several bottles of local wine to celebrate finishing the trip.

The next day we were up early to visit Table Mountain as the weather was clear. We had been advised to drop everything once there was a break in the clouds as the weather at this time of year could be bad. We drove up the steep hill to the cable car and rather embarrassingly ran out of diesel for the first time on the trip. Twenty minutes later we were disappointed to find the cable car was closed due to the strong wind and the clouds were already covering the top of the mountain. We had a look at the view from Signal Hill and then succumbed to the lure of the Waterfront shopping complex.

    View from Signal Hill

We found a great restaurant with a view that served 200 wines by the glass from the 600 varieties on the list. We were hooked and ruined the rest of the day as we sampled a few too many.

We met up with the last of the Going Home group for a goodbye drink or two. Kiko, Chris, Woody and Ben were on fine form but we were sad to have missed Col and Chrissy by a few days.

Once we sorted out the Landy shipment and flights home we had a few days left for sightseeing. We never got to see the top of the mountain as the clouds refused to budge but luckily the weather cleared for our trip down to Cape Point and The Cape of Good Hope. It’s an amazing drive and Bill wished he was in his Caterham instead of KT but it was a suitable finale to our 23,000 mile journey.

        Amazing drive to Cape Point

        Cape of Good Hope

On the way back to the city we stopped off to visit the residents of Bolders Beach. It’s home to a large population of African Penguins and they share the beach with the local town on sunny days. They were nesting when we were there and there were fluffy cute babies everywhere including some in local gardens.

The houses in the beach suburbs are certainly grand but the look is spoilt by the huge “Armed Response Security” signs that each one has. We loved Cape Town but it was probably the most dangerous place we had been in the last seven months. We wanted to walk from our hostel to the waterfront along the main busy road and the receptionist advised to not stop to talk to anyone and said we would probably be ok as there were two of us. This was at 10am in the morning!

That night we met up with some friends from Bristol on their honeymoon for dinner and returned to the 600 wines restaurant for some more tasting. It was a double celebration with Clare and Neil and we finally toasted our achievement.

After a fraught afternoon loading KT into the container, we spent our last night with Marica, Noel, Camilla and Rich. The trip has been amazing and we have seen such fantastic sights but the highlight has been the great friends we have made and shared experiences with. Thanks to everyone we have met en route.

In Cape Town airport I was asked to answer a market research questionnaire whilst I waited to board the flight. The woman could not believe that we had not flown to South Africa and had to create a new box to tick on her form. Hopefully, our website will inspire more overlanders and in the future their will be an overland option to choose.

Thanks for reading.