Cape Town Week 2 Continued

The call to Rohlig from our UK mobile lasted less than 10 minutes however on checking our balance we found it had cost over £17, we needed a South African SIM card pronto!

Luckily there is a VodaCom dealer in Hout Bay who was able to fix us up with a PAYG SIM for £15. Top up's though are not as straightforward as the UK, no credit card over the phone malarkey here, you have to find a shop with a top up machine or a VodaCom dealer who can do it manually.

The dealers are our preferred choice as they can accept credit cards whereas the machines will only accept cash and cash is precious as petrol stations in South Africa do not accept credit cards only cash so we always need to ensure we have enough to cover our journey.

After dropping off the Carnet we headed into the city centre to have a look around and to check out the internet cafes. We also needed to check out getting our Malaria tablets, which we had held off getting in the UK cos of the cost. (see medical page).

We found an excellent internet cafe called The Catwalk where  you can go online for an R10 per hour or if you want to use your own laptop it is R15 per hour, they also do excellent Latte's & food, well recommended.

Mike had suggested we visit the old BA Travel Clinic in the centre of town to see if they could provide the tablets, which sounded better than the alternative of finding a local doctor who would have to prescribe them.

After filling in the necessary forms we were immediately able to see a nurse who checked out our medical history following which we were offered a years supply of tablets for R10.50 a tablet plus R100 "clinic fee" - a good saving on what we were quoted in the UK.

We planned to use Chapman's Peak which is a lovely scenic route over the mountains on the way back to Hout Bay but after setting off we found the road suddenly closed due to serious bush fires!

Being rush hour there was no way to turn around until you reached the policeman stopping you going up the peak. He looked very harassed as he turned back each car gesticulating in a vague way that they would have to find another route, in true African style chaos seemed but a whisker away.

When we eventually reached him and asked which way we could use he bellowed at the hooting cars behind to be patient as "he had foreigners here"!   

That night we met up with Geoff & Beth Neden, old friends from our Botswana days, for a lovely re-union dinner. Their son Graham who lives in London was out for Xmas with Julia his girlfriend and as we were due to stay with them all the following week we had to be on our best behaviour. 

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