South Africa 20 May to 02 July (Part 1)
- Lydia Padilla
- Jun 6
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 1
About two days in to Cape Town I decided it was my new favorite city and told wife I wanted to move here rather than Barcelona. Two weeks later and it still holds true - I love it here! So, Coup-de-Spouse in the works??? If SA isn't on your travel list, it needs to be near or at the top. The Stellenbosch wine region is prettier than Napa or Tuscany and a LOT cheaper. Wife says that it looks like someone dropped Napa Valley into Yosemite National Park. And South African Service Industry techniques should be taught as a Master Class!
We've been slowly making our way east along the southern coast, heading to the BIG animals. So far, we have seen a bunch of penguins (they are cuter in real life than Animal Planet) and a few Ostriches??? and stood on the divide between two oceans at the southernmost tip of Africa.
We had the greatest experience last week when checking into a hotel room in Simon's Town. I walked in behind Lyd, slowly carrying a load of bags as I typically do, and she asked the hotel manager to repeat the directions to me, which I thought was odd. The lady said that "they have a problem with blahblahblah (I sort of zoned out here as I really wasn't expecting anything this interesting) so to please keep our windows closed and locked at night and early in the morning, or else the blahblahblah would get into the room and make a real mess of everything while they searched for food."
Wait.
Did she really say BlahBABOONSBlah???? Did I hear that correctly? Sorry, ma'am, did you say BABOONS? "Yes, sir, you know the big monkeys, the ones with the big teeth and the pink bottoms? They get into the rooms and search for food and are nightmares to get out and clean up after"! Oh hell, she DID say baboons. This suddenly got really interesting and qualified as the greatest check-in of all time.
I know she thought I was a bit daft, but I really had to hear more, especially once she mentioned, so cutely, that they had pink bottoms. Apparently the Baboons are like Gypsy or Roma thieves and train their little ones to slip into the tight spaces the larger ones can't fit into and steal food for the family. Ingenious. So every time I heard a noise the next couple of nights I ran to the windows to see if we were getting invaded by monkeys...unfortunately we missed the little thieves but I still can't get that stately, accented "Pink Bottom" statement from my mind.
*****We saw our first Baboon troup/e finally, about 40 of them, on the road to Gansbaai. Just driving down the road and they started coming out of the forest in droves, stopping to drink water from the small pools in the road after a rain. I know we looked like complete tourists, stopped on the side of the road, doing all we could to fight the urge to get out and get a closer shot. Other cars were simply honking and driving past but we were giving each other the full play-by-play from each side of the car and it was comical. We were as excited as a couple of kids at the zoo. And there were SO many of them. They were swinging from trees, play-fighting over a random piece of plastic trash bag, carrying babies on their backs, wrestling, making baboon sounds. And their pink bottoms were as cute as I expected. But they had some LONG fangs and appeared to be ALL muscle. Wish we could have gotten some better pics but I expect we will see some more at some point.
Random note for the day...I smell like fish. Not like I am holding some fish sticks in one hand fish and the cat won't leave me alone but like I just took a 6-day-old-boullabaise bath. Like somebody brewed up a big Chris chum. Like I sprayed on the Goldfish Spice...or got doused in Hugo Bass. I COULD go on with the bad cologne puns. But I really smell like fish. We WERE in Gabsbaai, which is the home of the Great White Shark cage diving tourist and research industry. I say WERE because we're now a couple of hours down the road and the inside of the car smells like fish guts. Which was really just me initially but now I've imparted my lovely salmon funk into the rest of the car, including Lydia, so it all just stinks. Probably should have tried to find a shower BEFORE we got on the road.
Unfortunately, the Great White's don't come here much now due to some really vicious Orcas (Port and Starboard - named that way becauese of the way their dorsal fins fall to the sides) but there are a lot of other sharks, mostly Bronze Whaler and 7-Gill sharks. I had to do it so jumped in the boat with 25 or so other tourists. We used Marine Dynamics which seems to be at the forefront of shark research and conservation efforts, so I felt pretty comfortable with them. Side note - some people can really barf a lot when they get seasick, by the way. Yuck. Anyway, they put you in a cage on the side of the boat and then proceed to pour fish soup into the water to attract the sharks. This really works BUT I think they ended up simply pouring the chum all over us also, so I'm pretty sure there is salmon behind my ear still. Overall, it was worth it to go on the boat but not sure I'd do it again. The sharks got really close and I enjoyed seeing them but I'd love to try it with both clearer and warmer water and with some actual Great White's.
I mentioned a few countries ago that one of the greatest things about travel is meeting people. When we were in Paris a couple of months ago with Kevin and Leslie, we sat next to a wonderful family in a restaurant. Like moths, we were drawn to the flaming duck dish that the son, Alex, ordered, so struck up a conversation with them. Turns out that they are a truly international family, South African dad/Canadian (via SoCal) mom/American kids and currently lived outside of Cape Town. And, as usual, Lydia had a common connection with Anton, the husband. We parted ways that night but exchanged numbers. As with so many other random happenings this trip, we saw the same family the next day in the Tuilleries, completely by chance. It's amazing how, in a city of millions, you can luck into the same people somewhere down the road. And, true to form, we plopped down next to them, uninvited, and had a great conversation on a sunny Paris day.
We have been mining (some might say BOTHERING) them for information this entire trip and were lucky enough to be able to meet Anton and Amanda out in Stellenbosch for dinner and then made it to their house the next morning for coffee and a quick visit with the kids before we hit the road. That is what makes our lives so fulfilled - getting to make new friends in new places. I expect that we're going to report back on the kids, Alex and Annie, at some point, and tell you how they're both changing the world in some way - what amazing kids!
We're currently in Plettenberg Bay, along the Garden Route, and making our way to Durban and then Johannesburg, where we'll meet up with our friends Kari and John from StL!
More soon!
Driving West - Addo Elephant Park to Durban
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