Cape Town and Home

Thursday, July 7 – Cape Town, South Africa

Dolphin Beach view of Cape Town and Table Mountain

 After a fairly cold night of camping we packed up and headed for Cape Town.  Yet another fairly long drive in our favorite bus.  However, everyone seemed to be cooperating on trying to make this last long transfer as comfortable as possible for everyone.  Along the way we stopped at Dolphin Beach for lunch with a great view of Cape Town with Table Mountain as the back drop. 

After some serious navigation, the bus with trailer in city traffic made it to our downtown guest house.  We quickly suited up in cycling gear and headed out for quick tour of the central city.  Cape Town has a long history because of it’s location at the southern tip of Africa with trading ships, slavery and rich farming communities surrounding it.  Touring in afternoon traffic was

Colorful houses in Cape Town bike tour

pretty exciting, especially after the last two and ½ weeks on dirt roads.  We saw the original fort, city hall, South Africa’s parliament building, the old slave trading area, colorful houses where the black workers lived pre-Apartheid and the steps of the church where Nelson Mandela made his first speech as president. 

South Africa is interesting in that it has 3 seats of government.  The Executive branch is headed by the president and is located in Pretoria near Johannesburg while the Parliament in 850 miles away in Cape Town and the Constitutional Court is in Johannesburg.  Maybe we should move the US Congress to St. Louis.  It couldn’t make it any more dysfunctional than it is now.

 

After our cycling tour of Cape Town, we returned to our guest house and found a HUGE surprise.  We were given a room with not only a real bed and shower, but a sitting area, kitchen, dining room table, and a loft with 3 more beds.  The guest house is a converted private home and this looks to have been a studio apartment at one time.  So much for tent camping!!

Friday, July 8, 2016 -Cape Town, South Africa

This is our last rull day in Africa!   Today we loaded the bus for a 2 hour transfer to Table Mountain National Park.  Our first stop was at the Boulders Penguin Colony.  A thriving colony of African Penguins live here.  From just two breeding pairs in 1982, the penguin colony has grown to about 2,200.  These penguins are also known as “jackass” penguins because of the hee-haw” sound they make.  Then on to Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa for a quick photo-op with a constant stream of tour busses joining us.

Our transfer continued on up the mountain to the lighthouses which are still in use operational and warn ships of the dangerous rocks around the cape.  After lunch, we mounted the bikes for one last ride out of Table Mountain National Park.  Shortly after the start of the ride an ostrich decided to cross right the road right in front of us.  It seems pretty amazing to see both penguins and ostriches in the same day, in the same park.   Although unseen, we were informed that 4 mountain zebras also call this area home.  Our ride took us on part of the route taken in the Cape Argus cycle race and up and over Chapmans Pass Drive which follows the rocky western coastline for 9k (6 miles).  This was a great ride with 114 bends that revealed breathtaking views in both directions.  Our tour ended at the bottom Chapmans pass with a group photo on the beach.

View from Chapman Pass Road

Then it was back in the bus for another hour ride back to the guest house.  When we arrived, we hauled the tandem up to our room to start on the packing process.  We skipped dinner with the group and ate at a gourmet burger place a couple of blocks from the room.  They were exceptionally good and definitely reminded us of home.  By 11PM we had the bike disassembled and back in the cases.

Saturday, July 9 – Heading home

After breakfast at the guest house we said our good byes, finished up our packing and were transported to the Cape Town International Airport by the tour company on the bus… one last lovely ride on our transport for the last 3 weeks.  We arrived early enough to avoid any significant lines at the airline, security or immigration and now have 2 very long flights to get back to the US, Cape Town to Dubai (10 hours), then Dubai to Seattle (14.5 hours).

Saturday, July 10, 2016- Home again!

Our cycling group on the beach at the end of the trip

We are the only tandem to ever attempt this cycling trip.

It took 38 hours, but we are home!  The flights were not only very long but very full so no room to stretch out.   It feels good to be home.  This was quite the trip with the first two weeks being over the top in terms of service, accommodations, safari trips, and food followed by the three weeks of roughing it with some riding in some pretty tough conditions.  Overall, it was a great adventure as we got to see a large portion of central to southern Africa.  Just the chance to see where Barbara is living, meet some of the local people, seeing all the animals and landscape was well worth it.  

Just to give you an idea of how vast the biking portion of the trip was, here is a map that shows the sections that we actually cycled relative to the total trip.  The short lines are the cycling sections and the big gaps in between are the “in the bus” sections.  Per the Garmin GPS we rode 550 mile over the 3 weeks.  This was less than we had anticipated, but given our mechanical issues with the rubbing brake, lost axle and flat, we probably missed out on 75 miles of riding.  

Map of  our cycling starting in Livingstone Zambia (upper right) and ending in Cape Town, SA (lower left)