Our trip to South Africa is with the company Explore and we remember from last time it's a full on timetable. This time we are cycling every day so landing at 7.30 am South African time meant we were here for a full day after very little sleep, was this a good idea? The journey had been relatively good although the full plane did seem to be stretching the cabin staff somewhat and morning tea was not forthcoming. Eight of our group were on the plane and we assembled at the airport to find that we did not stand out as being "old" as most of fellow tour members were of a mature age.
Our tour leader Mike seems very pleasant and we were soon on our way to hotel , luckily the minibus gets a priority lane as the motorway was gridlocked with commuter traffic. The huge shanty towns on the outside of the city were quite an eye opener. We could not get into our hotel room until 2 pm so we were dropped at the Waterfront to spend a few hours. This was a attractive city redevelopment full of the usual bars, cafes shops, markets and amusements with the stunning backdrop of Table Mountain. Hot sunshine and Christmas decorations - weird! It was beginning to get very hot so had to find the shade wherever possible a bit of a contrast from the damp cold England we had left yesterday afternoon.
After returning to our hotel our whole group assembled (fourteen of us). There was a mixture of nationalities, Danish, Canadian and Flemish ( Belgium) and the rest were English. The safety talk was somewhat scary when Mike told us about all the accidents that had happened and I realised we were going to do a lot of off road biking. Anyway lots of the ladies were a little sceptical so I was in good company, but we all piled in to the minibus off to Table Mountain to have our first bike ride.
Rayon was the bike leader and after being allocated a mountain bike we set off straight up a steep hill, a baptism of fire. At least it was on tarmac so I managed better than some but a mountain bike is pretty heavy.The views were amazing but the winds nearly blew us off the mountain, however the descent was very fast and we were soon back at the hotel for a short rest and refresh before dinner.
The Waterfront was the destination for dinner, the meal was excellent but the long wait meant we skipped pudding in favour of a welcome bed. Fortunately we were so tired we could sleep through the party music from across the road which went on til 3.30am.