Leaving tomorrow for the Selati Game Reserve in the northeast. Flying from Cape Town through Johannesburg to Neslruit, where our gracious hosts will pick us up for the drive north.
We’ve been fleshing out our driving tour and making some reservations for accommodations. Looking forward to spending time in both Lesotho and Swaziland, as well as a day or two on the Indian Ocean coast north of Durban.
I got a bit scortched on our five-hour hike up Helderberg Mountain today. I prefer to think of it as a stong base tan rather than, as someone described it tonight, “looking like a ripe tomato.”
It was a beautiful hike, made even better by the great meal at Guardian Peak restaurant on a vinyard just below the mountain after the descent. It’s amazing the quality of food and wine you can get here for next to nothing, at least compared to Seattle prices.
Above is a map of the Cape Town area. I’m staying in Gordon’s Bay, which is about a 40 minute drive from the city center. Most of the area between the two is developed as suburbs. I’ve added a few other areas that we’ve traveled to (or, in the case of Table Mountain, will be going to in the next week).
Photos of our hike in the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve have been posted to Flickr. Same for the trip down to Betty’s Bay and then back up through Franschhoek and Stellenbosch the other day.
We’ll be heading into the city to stay for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Looking forward to an international design expo that’s taking place this week.
Betty’s Bay, near Cape Town. This is just a series of still shots, not a movie.
This is a travel map for the trip as it stands now (click the image to see a larger version on my Flickr site). The driving portion of the trip is still in the planning stages. The route shown on this map roughly corresponds to the route that will bring us back to Cape Town from Nelspruit.
Despite being long (around 30 hours of flying time over 42 hours of travel time), the trip to Johannesburg was comfortable. A shower, dinner and drinks at the Hong Kong airport made that five-hour stopover enjoyable. (On the return trip, we’ll have time to go into the city when we land in Hong Kong.) I slept for 11 of the 12 hours between Hong Kong and Johannesburg.
We arrived in Johannesburg around 6:30am and got through the airport quickly, though without my checked bag. It got lost along the way, but was delivered to me the next morning with everything in good condition.
It took at least four days to get over the worst of the jet lag, but we had a great host in Johannesburg who made the transition very comfortable.
I’ve got my local mobile account up and running here in South Africa, so I’ll be posting daily snapshots from my phone camera. I also just uploaded photos from my regular digicam, which is something I’ll only be able to do occasionally. The first batch covers Johannesburg through the first day in Cape Town.
I leave in about four hours for South Africa, where I’ll be spending six weeks. In honor of my new adventure, this web site has been resurrected from the dead. As you can see from the previous entry, it’s been more than two years since my last post.
I’ll be arriving in Johannesburg at some unspecified (long) time in the future. Two days? One day? Who knows. It’s going to be a long flight, with a brief stop-over in Hong Kong. There won’t be much here for the next few days, but after that I hope to be adding words and photos often. Come back again when it’s more interesting.