BootsnAll Travel Blogs

Air con fixed and a nice cool drive thru into Cape Town. bit of a laff getting in as it was rush hour and I hadnt a clue where I was heading!…but I got to the Backpack hostel without crashing or killing anyone, so that was good.

nice hostel underneath Table Mountain: I had a beer (LOW ACOHOL , MA!) while watching the clouds literally pour down the mountainside. Met a couple of girls I met at J-Bay (nurses from Edinburgh) and had a beer with them and their smashed ozzie mate (they’d been on a wine tour) then an early night.

Sharp up next morning and got to the cable car an hour before it opened. but at least I was first on – and off at the top of Table Mountain . BEAUTIFUL view over the tops and down to the city and Camps bay. a quick brekkie at the top and I headed back down. down to the V&A harbour area where I took a trip on IQ: a beautiful modern catamaran which took us out and around the bay for a couple of hours….for 7 quid!. then a walk around the shops and a drive over to CAmps Bay, wher I plodged in the surf and walked the beach for a couple of hours (I needed the rest!) then back up to Signal Hill to watch the sun set…along with a whole load of couples and groups, which made me feel a lot like Billy No Mates! but it was nice sitting and chilling with the clouds milling around the mountain and Robben Island (where Mandela was held prisoner) in the distance.

Anyhoo, then it was bcak to the new hostel (CapeTown backpackers) and get a shave ready for the wife to arrive!!!!!

22:29 and the plane arrived……how good is it to see Gilly?……DAMN good!…I forgot how pretty she was!

Sadly, she brought UK weather with her, so that night and the next day it CHUCKED it down with mega high winds too! ..so no mountain to see, no harbour walks or sails and deffo no sunbathing!

OK, so we finally arrived at J-Bay…which was nice. It was a BIG party night here as a previous staff member was returning and we had brought Joseph down with us (he turned into a bit of a celeb). so…MORE drinks!!! (no ma, I’m not drinking too much…its SOCIAL drinking!) we played Pool (badly) too and Fussball (sp?) which we were quite good at….errrr well actually Alaia was pretty good at it 8^(

tried surfing again and went to the Billabong factory shop (again) and bought yet another T shirt (must remember to throw some old T shirts out) a quiet night on the Friday (just for you ma) apart from Alaia who was partying till 4:30 apparently, a quick brekkie and it was on the road again to Hermanus. I brought 2 girls with me this time…Alaia again (as she’s a bit ditsy and her Baz Bus ticket had expired) and another girl from Nottingham: Ruth. A fairly quiet 7 hour drive to Hermanus (mainly cos Alaia slept thru most of it) and we arrived at the Backpackers in time for more drinks at the bar (Coke ma, Coke) a fairly uneventful evening until I went to bed in the dorm: my bed had been taken by someone else, so I took another ‘free bed’…which turned out to be the property of a deaf girl that worked there – so after a fairly mindnumbing conversation between a girl who cant hear and therefore speaks very badly and me who was asleep and I lost: I slept on the couch.

Happily I got he night free for my trouble

Off to Gansbaai to watch GREAT WHITE SHARKS from a cage!…went with Ecoventures on a nice boat about 5 miles off the town. basically they have a cage which they strap to the side of the boat, you jump into it with a wetsuit on and they throw Tuna heads on a float and line out into the water: hopefully the sharks come and try to get a free meal (the tUna…not us!) I was first into the cage and got 2 nice drive-by’s by a smallish shark. I was turfed out of the cage to let someone else see, so spent the next hour or 2 on the ‘flight deck’ taking photos of bigger sharks attacking the bait: some nice shots to load (eventually) I got back into the cage later and got a nice drive-by from a 4m shark (yes, 4m! ….and it was so close its tail fin poked inside the cage

I’m now just outside Cape Town in Gordons Bay sitting in a cafe whilst a garage tries to fix the car’s aircon (which hasnt worked since I got it!) Coincidentally I met up in the cafe with 2 guys I met at Hermanus: Dillon and Tim (from Somerset) they leave for home today after a fairly interesting holiday: they were held up at gun and knifepoint by 3 guys who jumped out of a car in Strand (small place outside CT)…they wuz robbed (to coin a phrase) but apart from a minor cut on a hand, they got away unharmed!…scarey place these cities!

been a busy time since the Skydive: I spent a day at Tsitsikamma reserve at the mouth of Storms river - nice walk to a waterfall, and then I took a different way back and managed to split my shorts ... [Continue reading this entry]

WOOHOO!!!

its all happenin! ....did a skydive today over Plettenberg bay (apparently its in the top 2 places in world to skydive due to the gorgeous views!): strapped to a guy for a tandem jump which should have been 10,000ft but ... [Continue reading this entry]

oops, I did it again!

the highest bungy jump IN THE WORLD!!! 216m from a roadbridge (Bloukrans) in Tsitsikama, Republic of South Africa

WOOHOO!!!!

so, whilst I was on the Game Ranger course, I applied for an extension to my visa for RSA...I paid my money and was told it would be ready in a week or so. 10 days later and it still wasnt ... [Continue reading this entry]

...so 980km later I met the team and the 2 ACE students Ros and Tina. We caught Springbok and Mountain Reedbok for a couple of days (and got to fly in the chopper pretty regularly again WOOHO!!)  in a nice ... [Continue reading this entry]

I hired a car and spent 3 days in Kruger park: its a huge park - the size of Wales I'm told and has a number of biomes in there, from sandy veld to bushveld etc.

[Continue reading this entry]