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Capetown
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Feb 2, 3 PM. We're back on board, having left Lynchburg 48 hours earlier. Bethany had passed along a warning that travel on British Air was horrendous, but we had a very pleasant, albeit long, experience. Of course, we were in club class (equivalent to business class) and she was in coach, which made all the difference.
We had a seat that converted into a full-length completely flat bed, with a personal TV screen. I didn't figure out how to work everything until the second night, and I actually got no sleep at all, but it wasn't the airline's fault. John slept the entire second night.
Our itinerary looked like this:
Jan 31
1 PM drive from Lynchburg to Dulles Airport (DC)
10 PM - 8 AM fly Dulles to Heathrow (London)
Jan 1
5:30 PM - 10 AM fly Heathrow to Johanesburg, SA
Jan 2
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM fly Johanesburg to Cape Town, SA
We had to check one of our bags due to international flight rules-we were only allowed one carry-on bag each, unlike US travel. Fortunately I had read this on the BA email, and had packed accordingly.
We evaluated the British Air airport lounges and the airports during each gap in our flights.
Dulles Airport had a lot of space for walking. I carried my MBTs with me, and walked my full hour while waiting. The Dulles BA lounge was almost empty, the attendants spoke with a British accent so it felt very classy, and they served us a pre-flight dinner buffet with an Indian feel to it--very fresh and good. We didn't think we could beat this! But wait...
During the flight to Heathrow, we were promised a hot breakfast in the lounge after landing, but we should have stayed at the lounge in our arrival terminal for that to happen.
Since we'd gone to our departure terminal, we were bumped to the first class lounge so we could get a hot breakfast. That meant we also had access to the first class spa, so I got a shower in a tiny little bathroom and a complimentary 40 minute massage. Plus good food all day long, except for the hot breakfast -- apparently the British prefer their scrambled eggs really well done.
Heathrow airport is not good for walking--there is plenty of space, but smoke seeps from the smoking lounge and pervades all the air in the common areas.
All the BA lounges provided free drinks of all sorts, including wine, beer and spirits, unlike American Airlines, which charges for everything except coffee and tea.
The Johanesburg lounge had a lovely tropical flavor, with exquisite flower arrangements and the lilting South African accent. We had to buy lunch in the terminal-I can't remember why there was no food in the lounge. It was a grim sandwich because the terminal is under construction and there was only a minimalist snack shop. We used US dollars (1 dollar = 2 Rand), which was kind of a ripoff, since it is 7 Rand per dollar.
A Regent representative met us at the Cape Town airport and sent us via car service to a small, elegant hotel at the Cape Town dock to await the ship's clearance so we could board. We had about 3 hours there, during which I took another shower in a "day room", which was exactly like the little bathroom in the BA lounge. By this time, I was fairly expert at showering and changing from our luggage.
We had lunch at the hotel restaurant, and since I didn't yet know the rand to dollar conversion rate, I couldn't decide whether lunch was hideously expensive or normal. Now that I know the conversion, lunch was very reasonable, but my Driskill side worried until I found out.
We also walked through the tourist area in the dock while waiting. There were lots of little shops under big tents, offering massages, reflexology, woo-woo scents and candles, and crafts. We didn't get anything--in retrospect, I wish I'd tried one of the services, just to see.
At about 3:30 Regent sent another car to move us from the hotel to the ship. If we had walked, it would have been about 3 minutes. Since we drove, it was more like 10 minutes, because there is a pedestrian mall around the port, and cars have to go the long way round.
We slept the rest of this day and through the night, mighty glad to be back "home", and to have our "stuff" again.
Feb 3: Excursion to Inverdroon Game Reserve thru tunnel--got trapped, weren't supposed to be on this, missed Table Mtn. Here's us trapped in the tunnel:
. Inverdoon was by accident--we were scheduled to do a different tour, but the tour desk hadn't realized we were back on the ship, and we didn't have our tickets, so the excursion director threw us on this one. It turns out we were on an awful lot of game drives by the time we finished with Africa, but this was the first. We were trapped in the tunnel (our bus broke down halfway thru the tunnel) for an hour and a half, so we didn't get to do all the excursion. We had a very nice local lunch at Inverdoon:
I ate some Kudu, or something like that, a local game. John didn't.
Animals were scarce because we hit Kruger at mid-day, when everything with any sense is sleeping in the shade:
We were also supposed to hit a museum and have a "port tasting", which I'm sure was a liquor tasting and not a taste of another maritime port. Anyway, we couldn't because of the tunnel excursion, so they offered us a bottle of wine instead. All wine and liquor on the ship is free, so the guests revolted (nicely) and we got a refund notice on our door for $100 when we got back, instead of the free bottle of wine.
Feb 4: Chapman's Peak & Kirstenbosch Botanical garden world heritage site, great guide. I chose this excursion because it is a World Heritage site and because the drive to the Botantical Garden is rated as one of the world's most beautiful--that's Chapman's Peak. Here we are on Chapman's Peak, standing in front of something important that I can't remember:
Bethany & I also took a ride rated as one of the world's most beautiful when we went to Big Bend--along the Rio Grande from west Texas to Big Bend. The 2 drives are about equal, IMHO.
Interesting sidelight: Africa is the original source for amaryllis!
And here's Capetown from our ship:
Even in our extremely jet-lagged condition, we had a great trip to Capetown. We never did get to the top of Table Mountain, considered THE thing to experience in Capetown, but oh well, we did a pretty good job considering our condition.
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