Since Laurie had already been to South Africa, this post is mostly just my own observations (not the other other posts weren't, but some notes from Laurie get in because of how we're doing this).

We landed in the late evening, got our car, and drove the long distance to our hotel (maybe 600 meters).  The hotel had a very small room, inclusive breakfast, and a soda machine (5 rands for a soda or 6 rands for a beer).  However, it was very functional and served it's purpose well -- we got to roll off the plane and in to the hotel.

The car is amusing.  It's a brand new VW Chico 1.4.  It has four doors and a hatchback trunk that is large enough to hold our big bag.  For amenities it has a heater, a clock, and a trunk cover.  It has a very efficient use of space, especially between the pedals... you can press all three at once with a single foot without even turning your foot sideways as both Laurie and I discovered.  (Of course, at night it was dark and I was wearing boots and as I learned the next morning a mat was also helping press the accelerator when the brake was pressed.)

Yeah, that's about it.  There is no radio, no air bags, no power steering, vritually no storage pockets, and really not much of anything.  It doesn't even have fuel injectors.  Yes, it has a nice choke control for the carbuerator -- something I missed when trying to start it late at night.  It also has a gear lock -- a switch you can flip when in reverse that requires a key to unlock the gears for shifting or driving again.

The next day we went out to Stellenbosch area to do some wine tasting.  We didn't get to as many of the wineries as we had hoped, but we did have a good time doing the wine tasting.  Lunch was at a fun place that had lots of well fed birds (mostly just Peking and Mallard ducks, but some other birds you don't see in the states).  It also had a place for some cheetahs and bird of prey.

After that, we had another night at the airport hotel.  The breakfasts there were actually not bad at all.  It was just your ordinary continental breakfast affair, but with eggs and some meats, should you want them. We then drove off towards Hermanus and our Arrabella Cape Hotel and Spa. 

This drive took us passed the African Penguins.  We stopped there for a little while.  Luckily, we got there early before other people and had a pretty quiet time to film and take pictures.  The park rules did not include not feeding the penguins, which was curious.  So, when kneeling down next to the railing, some would come right up to it.  I actually got pecked on the sole of my shoe by one!  They were so cute, though. (And no, we didn't feed them anything... fingers included.)

The coastal drive was quite nice.  I had observed that we were at about the same latitude as California.  The weather was very similar to home weather, too (although it's just getting to be spring now rather than fall).  I wasn't expecting such neat mountain ranges. I actually really like them a lot.

It's also very cool to almost always be seeing whales and dolphins off the coast.  Sure, we can see them off our own coast in Santa Cruz, but it's not nearly as frequent of an occurrance without going out on a boat.  Besides, you won't see dassies (aka rock hydrax) all over, either.

Arriving at the Arrabella, we found lots of staff although not as nice as other places we had been.  It is a golfing community and well know around the area so we suspect they're just a little on the "uppity" side and we come in wearing backpacks and want to carry our own stuff. ;) (No offense to anyone there; the food and service was great.)

Well, more about this time in the next post... Laurie wants the laptop now. ;)

Posted by Shane on September 19, 2006 7:20 AM | Permalink