On Friday we decided to do a mini peninsula tour. That is, we would go down towards Cape Point but not actually bother to go into the National Park (i.e. the actual Cape Point) because we’ve done it a number of times in the past and the drive around the coast is beautiful in it’s own right. We were going to do it in a way that we’ve never done it before i.e. ‘backwards’.

So, because we were in Hout Bay we went over Chapmans Peak drive - one of the most scenic coastal drives in the world. The weather was perfect with blue skies, no wind and a pleasant temperature in the low 20s. Stopped a few times to take photos (see pics) and then found a new and pleasant restaurant where we stopped for a coffee. Continuing, we proceeded around the coast via Misty Cliffs (regular readers might remember that the Safas call it Musty Cluffs -where the also eat fush and chups) and onto Scarborough. This one is a small pleasant village with a beach where a few surfers were riding the waves. We stopped and had a stroll along the beach.

Then on to Simonstown, the home of the SA navy. One of their ships (it might be their only ship) was in harbour! We stopped for lunch - toasted sandwich - which turned out to be a fried sandwich because load shedding had just kicked in! After a wander round the quay we continued our tour only to end up in an enormous traffic jam for several
miles through Fish Hoek. After a good half hour of crawling we were able to take another route which we knew and bypass the worst of it. It might have been an accident because a couple of ambulances came through at one point.
When we got back, we had a dip in the pool.

In the evening we decided to go to the Bay Harbour Market which is mainly indoors in an old warehouse and consists of a good range of craft, food and drink stalls. Load shedding kicked in at 6pm on the dot for a couple of hours so it was all a bit darker than normal. We did, however, have two large beef rump wraps (with salad, avo and balsamic) which were really yummy!

Our food total for the day amounted to R45 for lunch and R145 for dinner - so we fed ourselves for a day for a tenner! That helps average out the cost of Beau Constantia on Wednesday!

This morning dawned grey and a bit damp. Not a big problem as we were moving on to Newlands. It stayed cloudy but warm until about 2pm when the rain came - quite hard! We are going out tonight to Basilico - local Italian and then doing a braai tomorrow!

N.B.
The new smell of South Africa = diesel fumes from generators during load shedding.

The new sound of South Africa = the annoying drone of generators during load shedding!