Trip Report:
Two Weeks in South Africa, January 1999
Richard's Version
Day 2
Saturday, 1/9-
The Cape Town airport is pretty small, and we were let out onto the tarmac and taken by bus to the terminal. It was very sunny and warm (ahhh, high summer in the southern hemisphere!). Luggage came quickly and we went out into the maelstrom of archaeologists trying to get rides into the city. The travel folks (of course) had lost my name, so I had to unpack to find my receipt (which I was smart enough to have with me at least). They had also never told us where to meet for our Sunday morning city tour, and we had to borrow a cell phone (which everyone in South Africa seems to carry) to call and ask. The bad news- 7:45am at the University. No time for jet lag! While waiting for a minibus my archy spotting was confirmed when I met Tom Cummins (from U Chicago) (read his luggage tags). We rode the same bus to town and had a nice (though sleepily incoherent) conversation on the way to the hotel.
Our hotel is the Holiday Inn Garden Court on Eastern Blvd. It is inconveniently located halfway between UCT (University of Cape Town) and the city center. It is a large, clean, generic hotel, though the pool is nice. We had a shower and went down to catch the hotel shuttle into town for a walk and dinner. That's when we heard the first of many excuses for why the shuttle wasn't running. We hardly saw the 'hourly' shuttle the entire week. So, we had a taxi called and were dropped off at the (closed) Tourist Info Center on Adderly street (22 Rands). It was already 5pm, and the streets were emptying fast. We walked up Adderly a bit, then over to St. George's pedestrian mall. At St. Georges cathedral we saw a wedding party, then walked to the Victoria and Alfred (didn't know there was an Alfred did you? Apparently he was a cousin of Victoria that did a bunch of renovations at the waterfront) Waterfront.
The waterfront is about a 20 minute walk along a poorly marked route from downtown. We went astray twice before finding the pedestrian entrance by the Cape Grace hotel (where Clinton and his 1000 person entourage had stayed). Even though it was after 5pm, we could still feel the sun burning our skin, and the glare was quite strong. Of course, as soon as I pulled out my sunglasses a screw went flying. I got lucky though and found it, so I wasn't forced to squint the entire trip.
The waterfront is part mall (a very nice one), part hotel row, part Pier 39. There is an ampitheater where a jazz fest was going on, and big crowds (and a few begging children). We wandered a bit, watched some sea lions, then had dinner (acceptable pizza and pasta) at a chain called 'St. Elmo's Fire.' This is when we first started to see how favorable the Dollar/Rand exchange rate is. Our 55 Rand dinner for two came out to be less than $10! The mall also was a good place to get money, so we used the ATM to get 500 Rands ($86) to tide us over for awhile. The cab ride back to the hotel cost 40 Rands. We had no trouble getting to sleep, but we woke up at 3am for a couple of hours, before nodding off again for too few minutes before the alarm.
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Last Updated 23 February, 1999
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