Chilling in Cape Town

After finishing our coast path adventure we had two days of hard graft on the van before heading up to West Sussex for my cousin Kathleen’s wedding.

Kathleen wed her Ollie in the beautiful autumnal grounds of Glydbourne opera house, it was an amazing wedding that the whole family had been looking forward to for the whole 5 years of their engagement.

I always forget how small the Keatley’s are until I see our family next to other normal sized people, we really do come from munchkin land.

After a quick stop off to see Olly’s sister we headed to the airport. 

We had accidentally ended up with KLM flights which turned out well for us as the the food was very good and we even had mid flight ice-cream! 

On landing in Cape Town we went to pick up our surprisingly cheap hire car and were slightly worried when we found out it had only done 44km and did not have a single scratch on it. Lucky we have purchased extra excess insurance. The car is superbly simplistic and does not even have central locking, but importantly it does have air-con and reasonable ground clearance.

We have had some down time so far which was definitely needed. But have managed to explore the harbour front, walked around the botanical gardens, eaten some tasty food, met up with some of Olly’s friends and have spent some time on the stunning Blouberg beach.

It may have been a mistake to have read the FCO advice for South Africa as I didn’t have any worries before, but it is a vast contrast to rural Devon where people don’t even lock their doors. Here doors are always looked and have a second “cage” door, as do the windows. Every house also has a sophisticated alarm system. 

We have already spotted quite a lot of wildlife; sunbirds in the botanical gardens, some girthy tadpoles, lots of pretty butterflies some very large interesting bugs (indoors) and today even a snake trying to cross the motorway.