At last!
One of those days
We all have them. Those days where, if it’s going to go wrong, it does. We had that kind of day yesterday. Nothing major or life-threatening, just a day of annoyances and irritations.
We had to check out of our lovely Airbnb place and when I was thanking and saying goodbye to our host, she commented that I looked so calm and relaxed about still not having Clancy. I replied that we had been deported from Russia, so this current situation is just inconvenient, not stressful. It’s all about perspective.
We were hopeful that we would be able to get Clancy yesterday though, and decided to go and hang out near the freight forwarder’s, in case we got the call to go there. We are the only ones with keys to the car, so when the shipping container is opened, we really have to be present. We decided to revisit The Old Biscuit Mill in trendy Woodstock, have something to eat at one of the eating places there, have a wander around and wait. When we were here 3.5 years ago, we had lunch at The Test Kitchen which is located in the Old Biscuit Mill. It doesn’t open for lunch now and we just wanted something simple so we went and had burgers at Redemption Burgers. What really caught our eye about this place was their clever menus. The burgers were delicious too.
We had a walk up and down Woodstock’s main drag, Albert Road. Lots of places to eat, antique and retro shops, clothing stores and other signs of gentrification from light industrial to inner-city trendy suburb. We found a shady spot inside the Biscuit Mill complex and sat and waited for news from the freight forwarder, but by 3.30 we decided that it probably wouldn’t be happening until next week, so we extended the rental car hire again and booked another Airbnb place, only a couple of kms from the previous one.
Our potential Airbnb host had been pretty good about replying to messages, but somehow once we’d booked and paid to stay for 3 nights, everything went quiet. We got to the address and rang the doorbell as instructed … nothing. It was just on 5pm and we thought maybe he wasn’t home from work yet, so we waited. Sent a couple more messages, rang the bell a few more times, sent some SMS messages. Still nothing. This place is fairly typical of suburban homes here – very high fence, built like Fort Knox, impossible to get into. This one doesn’t have razor wire or electric fencing, but a lot do.
So while we waited, we went off to the local shopping centre to find something to cook for dinner and as he was walking back to the car, Greg noticed that one of the hubcaps was missing. Sigh. We remembered hearing a noise as we were driving on the motorway to the Airbnb, and we now realise it was the sound of the hubcap rolling away. We drove back to where we thought we might have lost it, but couldn’t find it. So, back to the Airbnb, back to no answer when we rang the doorbell. We were starting to think that maybe we’d lost our money and our bed for the night, then decided to phone the number rather than just send text messages. Answered on the first ring and things went smoothly from there. No idea why he didn’t reply to any of the other messages we’d sent, but by that time we didn’t feel like pursuing the topic, we just just glad to get inside and get settled. It’s a nice place and we’re happy to spend a few days here.
And now, today has been fine. Lovely weather, Greg took our laundry to a laundry service nearby so we now have clean and beautifully folded clothes, and we went to a different Food Lover’s store where I found packets of dried tortellini and ravioli which is a staple part of our camping pantry and which had eluded me up until now. Food Lovers has excellent produce & meat, and offers a good range of groceries, all at lower prices than the other supermarket chains here – Spar, Pick & Pay, Checkers. We’ll probably go back to that one and stock up before we head off in Clancy.
I hope your weekend is going well too.
Still in Cape Town, still waiting for Clancy
Things are progressing, but very slowly. The container ship docked on Tuesday and ‘our’ container was unloaded, then yesterday it was taken by truck to a freight forwarders depot.
Now we’re waiting for an appointment with Sth African customs to come and inspect the contents of the container, ie Clancy and Willie. Then, hopefully, we can hand over the remainder of the freight / customs / fees payment and drive Clancy away.
We are staying at the Airbnb until tomorrow, but then they have new guests booked in, so we hope to stay at African Overlanders which offers vehicle storage, a campground and other services not far away from where we are now. It offers some cabin accommodation and camping.
So, we’re feeling frustrated and powerless at the moment, but very grateful that we have comfortable accommodation. And the weather is beautiful!
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
We’ve held off posting much because this blog is meant to be about our overlanding adventures, but as we’re still sitting in Cape Town waiting for our ship, the Xin Pu Dong, to come in, I think we should just post what we’re doing while we wait.
On the topic of Clancy, though, the ship he’s on is currently sitting just a few kms away from the Cape Town Container Terminal and it’s due to dock in the early hours of tomorrow morning. We’re still not sure when we’ll actually get to collect Clancy, but it’s getting closer.
We seem to have spent the last few days visiting shopping centres, trying to find stuff we need for Clancy and for our trip. Fire extinguishers were fairly easy to find. Smoke detectors …. not so easy. Seems like they aren’t really a ‘thing’ here, whereas at home we could find them in the local supermarket and Bunnings hardware would have an entire section devoted to different ones. We have found the butane cartridges we use to cook with, but the prices vary from an extortionate $5.50 per can to a more reasonable $2.50 per can. Greg has bought a few tools, but I have held off buying food and other essentials yet because I can’t remember what’s packed in the camper and I’m not sure how much space we’ll have when we have it set up properly. The number one rule when we packed the camper to ship was that all the storage space and boxes had to be either full or empty, so that stuff couldn’t rattle around and break.
On Saturday we got as close to the container port as we could, but at that stage the Xin Pu Dong was 20kms out to sea and we weren’t able to see it at all. It was a gorgeous day though, and we had a wonderful view of a cloud-free Table Mountain and Lion’s Head. Forgot to take any photos. Yesterday we had planned to go to a market in the Company Gardens and then on to Kirstenbosch, Cape Town’s Botanical Gardens, but it drizzled most of the day so we postponed our visit to Kirstenbosch until today.
Gorgeous day with another perfect cloud-free view of Table Mountain. High temps here are mostly in the mid-high 20s. Not very busy at Kirstenbosch as it was a Monday, but it would have been nice to visit on a Sunday as they have live music acts on the Concert Lawn during summer. Kirstenbosch is the largest of 11 botanical gardens spread throughout SA. It celebrated its centenary in 2013, and there are 100 year-old plaques on trees that were planted before or when the Gardens were first established. Prior to this, the land had been, at various times, vineyards, farmland, orchard, forest and in prehistoric times it formed part of the territory of 2 local clans.
The land was donated to the nation by Cecil John Rhodes, who had purchased it in the late 19th century to protect the eastern slopes of Table Mountain from urban development.
The Gardens are beautifully set out with sections including a Fragrance Garden, a Braille Trail, Useful Plants, a Waterwise Garden, a Weed Garden that features many plants that are very common in Aussie gardens, Proteas, Ericas, a Garden of Extinction and a really superb Tree Canopy Walk which was constructed to celebrate the garden’s centenary.
We spent a few very happy hours there and could easily go back and see more bits that we missed the first time.
Before we start
We’re sitting in Cape Town, waiting for Clancy the Camper to arrive. He is in a container on a ship, which is currently en route between Durban and here. The ship is expected to arrive in Cape Town this afternoon and we hope to be able to collect Clancy early next week.
Let’s backtrack a bit though, while we’re waiting. We have travelled in Southern Africa twice – in Jan-Feb 2015 we rented a Corolla and camped around South Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. We liked it so much, we came back again later in the year, rented a 4WD and travelled around Namibia, Botswana and a bit more of South Africa in July-Aug 2015
Africa has somehow got under our skin, and we always thought we’d return, but in the last couple of years our sketchy plans have really taken on a life of their own. Greg bought a Landcruiser HJ75 ute in late 2016 and has spent the last 18 months or so building a camper on the back of it out of composite fibreglass. That project really could have had its own blog, but Greg will add a separate page or 2 with some information and photos. He has done an incredible job and built us a ‘tiny home’ on wheels so we can have more African adventures.
Our long-term plan is to keep Clancy in Africa and travel through some of the 54 countries that make up this incredible continent, heading in a sort-of south-to-north direction.
On this trip, we plan to drive from Cape Town through Namibia to Angola, then head south through Botswana and finish up in Johannesburg. We have already sussed out storage for Clancy at a campground/guesthouse/car storage place near Jo’burg Airport. We stayed in a cabin there for a couple of nights earlier this week, got to know the owners and have already paid to store Clancy for 5 months when we finish this trip.
Our travel plans are always very … um …. imprecise, perhaps informal is a better description, but at the time of writing, our next trip will probably be through some of Eastern Africa – Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania. Eventually we want to travel through Western Africa, finishing our African adventure in Morocco. And then, who knows?
The only thing we are certain of is that Clancy will never return to Australia. Our friends Anna and Henry, the Backroad Vagrants, spent 17 days cleaning Willie, their Landcruiser Troopcarrier, before shipping him from Vladivostok to Australia. And as Greg says, Landcruiser HJ75s are worth more out of Australia than in.
Clancy and Willie are currently sharing a 40ft shipping container. Fate and the Facebook Overlanding Africa group brought Anna, Henry, Greg and me together towards the end of last year when Anna posted, asking for information about shipping a vehicle from Australia to South Africa. Greg responded and many, many emails and several months later, we are very close to being reunited with our vehicles.
