37. Africa trip: Pretrip, travel, and Cape Town

Africa emergency.
I go to double-check on the Visa requirements for South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Sadly, since our government is being difficult and now charging people to come into the United States, Namibia has reciprocated and I now need to pay about $90 to enter. Luckily I can do that on arrival. However, looking at Zimbabwe's website, I discovered that I need two consecutive blank passport pages for each transit through South Africa plus another three pages for Zimbabwe. Then I checked Namibia and they want three pages. Also as does Botswana. That's 13 pages and I couldn’t get a extended large size passport last time, which means I only have 19 pages of available for stamps of which only five are empty. And I leave in less than 6 days. I'm not even sure that I'm able to make this happen, but I check the US passport website and it does seem like I can get an appointment tomorrow morning. Technically it's this morning since it's now 4:30 a.m. and the appointment would be for 7:30am. I make the appointment and then realize that I need to have paperwork filled out and printed and brought with me. Since my printer isn't working, I decide to change from the Friday appointment to the Monday appointment. That still gives me over 48 hours to get the passport back since I leave Wednesday late afternoon. With the $60 expedited fee and $21 express shipping that's $211 for the renewal.

Luckily the morning brings a reply from my panicked email to the travel agency in Botswana. She said that 5 consecutive pages should be fine as the stamps are not that big. I also hear back from my neighbors who are from South Africa and they confirm that information adding that they will often agree to fit the stamp onto pages where they can. An online suggestion to put post-it sheets on the two consecutive pages with a note “Please leave blank” seemed like a good idea since someone also said they saw people denied boarding onto a plane for not having that. As it turns out, they did indeed check that I had 2 consecutive pages blank before allowing me on the plane to Cape Town. And I managed to get through the whole trip only using 2 blank pages (for visas from Namibia and Zimbabwe) and 4 half-pages.

meal at SFO Golden gate lounge

Dawne dropped me at the airport and I flew though check in and security. Golden Gate lounge was small but nice. Not a lot of variety but good food: meatballs, pasta, veggies, sandwiches, breads and cheeses, fruit cups and yogurt cups. The plane was a different story. There were multiple crying children on my flight to istanbul.

Turkish air uniforms
though they can
also be gray

One man called the flight attendant and tried to change seats away from them. There were at least 9 small children on the flight and while many were well behaved, 3 or 4 of them were crying, laughing, or running down the aisle for about 2/3 of the flight. At this point I’m feeling very lucky that I was able to upgrade to business class for the Istanbul-Cape Town 11 hour flight for only 75,000 miles (about $1050).

huge Turkish air lounge

my suite

We all survived the flight and I staggered to the Turkish Airlines Business Lounge. It is amazing! It’s ginormous with a golf simulator, 4 different cooking areas where you can watch them preparing food, a whole cold food/salads area, drinks, and of course a dessert area. There are multiple rooms and open seating areas including one with 12 TVs each tuned to a different closed caption channel. There’s a huge luggage locker area where people can get a code and store their stuff. They also have suites and showers. Each one has a bed and desk with a TV, how cool is that! The suites are only for people who have between 6 to 9 hours between connecting flights. If you have more than 9 hours you must wait until 9 hours before your flight to get one of the 24 suites available. I immediately went to bed though I only slept 3 hours before I was wide awake.

lounge directory

lounge storage

bathroom

food prep room at Turkish airlines lounge

After my shower in the wonderful all marble shower room, I went to explore the lounge. They had a “flight experience” which made me wonder if it was a flight simulator or a beer flight. Turns out it was a room showing the history of the airline from the 1920’s to now. I checked out the food. When I arrived around 8pm there were people busy preparing food in all 3 of the enclosed glass areas where you could watch them prep, but now after midnight there were only people cleaning. There were still people making pide, which are a cross between a calzone and a pizza though they don’t have tomato sauce and they do have a lot of ground meat often with a little cheese. If you are in Livermore you can get them at Sultan’s Kebab (but not the Pleasanton location sadly). The ones at the lounge are really good. Bahar, a foodie who is a manager at the Conrad in Istanbul said they are some of the very best in the city. They are flaky and crispy.

great food in Turkish air lounge

baklava at lounge

Pide station in Turkish air lounge

golf simulator in lounge

great Turkish airlines business lounge

my business class seat

Before I knew it, it was time to board my flight. I had a really nice seat in business class. I’ve only flown business class a few times and have never had a lie-flat bed! Each time I’ve felt like the flight didn’t last long enough. The food was very good and I enjoyed the lie-flat bed. I especially liked the little touches like the candle lit dinner (led candle).

soup in business class

lamb chops in business class

breakfast in business class

my lie flat bed

taxi guy who ripped me off

Getting into Cape Town went very smoothly. I got my bag, hit an ATM, and walked towards the Uber spot as I didn’t want to get lost and have them wait for me. I still had a few more turns to make outside when a nice young man approached me about taking his taxi instead of Uber for the same price, 190 ZAR (about $10). I agreed and said I could pay in cash but he said they only let the drivers take credit card, which is true for a number of things in SA. I was a bit skeptical but agreed since I still wasn’t sure how to get to the Uber spot. I took a picture of the driver and car which I sent to a couple of friends to be safe. We got to the hotel with no issues. There were two vehicles blocking the Hyatt drop off so he pulled up across the street and double parked. A guy there said he couldn’t park there but he said something back which I guess was that he was just dropping me off and he popped the trunk.

Hyatt Cape Town

I had said I wanted to add a tip to the charge amount and he asked how much. I said 30 rand so he confirmed a total of 220 zar and had me scan my card. Then he hopped out and got my bags quickly. Belatedly I realized I had not seen the actual total on the charge machine and asked to see it, but he didn’t understand what I was asking and I figured if there was a problem I would take care of it with Chase. Needless to say, I fell for the scam and he charged roughly 1900 rand instead of 220 ($102) and I now need to wait for it to go through before I can dispute it. Looking back it all makes sense…they can’t take cash, he said there was no parking but he could have double parked in front of Hyatt, he didn’t show the machine and acted rushed.

Colorful houses in Bo-Kaap

my room at Hyatt Cape Town

It got much better from there. The doorman took my bag, and waited with me while they got my room ready since I was early. He told me about a couple great restaurants up the street since I wanted to eat in bo-kaap and apparently we ARE in bo-kaap. He also suggested going to the Table Mountain cable car (gondola) at 5pm so I could catch the 6:15 sunset.

After a quick shower I took an Uber to V & A Waterfront mall where I wandered around a bit. There was a large group singing with some dancing for tips. That’s a big thing in South Africa. They seem to be singing all the time! Nice upbeat African chanting style music. On my tour the next day there were a couple groups of kids singing for donations as well. I wish I brought more $1 bills with me as they like USD here and it’s hard getting change for smaller ZAR bills from hotels. I pop into some tourist souvenir shops which have pretty high prices though it’s hard to tell since I just got here. At the end of the waterfront there was one more shop with a bunch of sculptures out front. I decided to take a look. They were a shoppers paradise!

Nice batik in store

Much better prices than the other stores and they had some really cool stuff like serpentine carved elephants, colorful painted small elephants, painted and carved ostrich eggs. These are everywhere! They have a lot of ostrich and apparently one egg has as much inside as about 20 chicken eggs so judging from the tons of painted and carved ostrich eggs, they must eat a lot of eggs here! I love that they use everything they have instead of wasting and landfilling everything like we do. There were a number of cute items like little cars made out of cut up aluminum cans. They also had wonderful batik cloth which I will buy on my return in 2 weeks when Dawne is around to help me decide. I did buy a beautiful stone carved elephant and a small piece of polished malachite. I had forgotten that malachite comes from Africa so the retail price of $2.50 for my little polished stone is less than my wholesale price back home.

cool wood carvings in store

wax batik paintings

empty gondola up

I headed up to Table Mountain a bit later than I wanted but it worked out perfectly. The sun was just setting as we rode up the tram and I got some great pictures. Also there are usually about 30 people squashed in the giant rotating gondola but since it was so close to closing time there were only 7 of us riding up over 1000 meters. At the top was a great view of the city and the brilliant sunset over the ocean. Going down we were squashed in pretty full, which is why the floor rotates so everyone gets a chance to see all sides and take pictures through the 3 open windows.

on top of Table Mountain

Cape Town at night

sunset from the gondola at Table Mountain

dinner first night

Dinner was at the recommended restaurant, Biesmiellah, just a couple blocks down the street. I had the Malay tomato bredie lamb dish with rice. A reviewer said it was just a little too sweet and had tomatoes so I knew I'd love it. I also ordered a Falooda Rose milk with basil seeds, vermicelli, ice cream and rose syrup. It was spectacular. I gained about 5 pounds this trip and this drink was the start of it all! I tried the denning vleis the next day and I almost inhaled it: 3 thin sliced lamb loin chops in a slightly sweet rich onion and broth sauce. The sauce is even better than the amazing tomato one yesterday. They say it is onion and tamarind with Malay spices. So good! Fresh roti was fabulous, though really when is fresh homemade roti not? And of course I had to finish with the ice cream rose drink for dessert!

Rose drink

second dinner

recommended restaurant in bo kaap

Cape Point

I really wanted to go to Boulders Beach to see jackass penguins. They were so named because they bray like donkeys but people also now call them African penguins. Boulders Beach is an hour down the road so the easiest way to visit is on a day tour with the bus company that also does the hop on hop off bus. So Day 2 I walked a few blocks away to meet the bus. The tour included a trip to Cape Point, which is the most southern point on the Cape Peninsula, but actually not the southern most point in Africa. There is a hike up to the lighthouse or you could take the funicular. I decided to opt for the walk for exercise and the view, though I do like funiculars.

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I saw cool midnight blue birds that when they fly they have large brown stripe on their wings. We hiked down to the point and I hoped to see some cool animals on the hike and we did see some ostriches but nothing else.

at Cape Point

penguins

Then we were off to the penguins. Penguins! I did a quick walk out the boardwalk and got some good pictures of penguins then walked briskly down the 600 meter path to the beach entrance where I hoped to swim with them. Along the way spotted some fuzzy animals (dassies) along the path and more penguins. Alas, from the path which overlooks the beach it was clear there were no penguins in the water. Since I am generally averse to getting wet and swimming, I spent the time watching a family of dassies play. A baby would go up hill then flip over and roll down it over and over. Truly adorable. Another just lay there looking at me, sloth-like. I spotted a penguin mom with 2 babies, so super cute! I had another 15 minutes to kill so did a little shopping, buying some small stuffed penguins and a couple paintings I liked of elephants though I forgot to take pictures of the artists.

cute dassie

African penguin with chicks

money in South Africa