June 2022

I considered going to Cape Town from Johannesburg by train. It would’ve been a 938 mile journey in 26 hours, which in itself didn’t sound too bad to me, but that meant cutting our time in Cape Town to only 3 days. The idea of train travel came to me from my own uneducated preconception formed by old movies about colonial Africa where women in flowing white dresses and white wide beamed hats took long train journeys to reunite with their men. In other words, I didn’t know much about South African reality. Anyway, we flew for 2 hours ($60) instead.

The pick up service arranged through gettransfer.com was seamless, and, they offered a good daily rate (about $250 – 350, depending on how far out of the city we went, for a ride with an English speaking guide/driver for 8 hours in a 12 passenger van) for whenever we needed for rest of our stay.

Our home was provided by Airbnb, a 7 bedroom/7 bathroom house ($350/night, off-peak) overlooking Camps Bay, a beach town filled with big, fancy houses. The sunset view right out our living room window was simply incredible each and every evening. The main drag where tons of restaurants and markets were located was a 15 minute downhill walk from the house. Cabs were happy to bring us back home for $1 – 2.

The dark brown symbols show where we’ve been, the others are possible points of interest

We were to have 4 full days in Cape Town, thus, I had to figure out the best way to fit in all the interesting places without tiring ourselves to death. We would see the town on the first and the 4th day, go to the Cape of Good Hope on the second day, and visit some wineries on the third day.

The Hop-On-Hop-Off bus was relatively cheap (about US $15) in Cape Town, and there was a stop (#8) right down the hill from us. The recorded guide on the bus was quite informative, weaving in the history of Apartheid and diamond mining in the narrative, and the bus routes covered the city nicely. We got off the bus in downtown (stop #5) to have lunch and get the feeling of the city center. The city seemed to be waking up very slowly, and most restaurants were not even open when we were there around noon. We ended up eating at a small food court with various ethnic food stalls in it.

Old colonial buildings were there with new high rises mixed in. Cape town (population: 4.6 million) is the legislative capital, one of 3 capitals of South Africa.

We got back on the bus and headed to the highlight of the day: the Table Mountain Cable Car ($20 – 23 R/T). One can’t talk about Cape Town without talking about this flat topped mountain that is supposed to be the most photographed site in the country. The view from the top was breathtaking. Yes, it was worth every penny we paid!

We came home from there, but some others in our group did all 3 routes on the HoHo Bus. It was a nice introduction to the city for sure. Let’s have some sea food, we all agreed on the dinner menu.

We walked down the hill to Codfather. Pick your fish, tell them the size you want and the cooking method. I made a mistake of just picking one fish, small size and grilled. It was so fresh and delicious and cost only about $4. I wanted more but didn’t feel like going through the process again since there was a long line. I envied those who had an assortment of sea food on their plate and had gotten away with paying about $15 – 20..

The Cape of Good Hope and the winery tour will have their own write ups.

On the second full day in Cape Town, I chose to do an art museum and a fancy lunch. Some people went hiking up the Lion’s Head, some just relaxed by the pool in the house or stayed in Camps Bay. Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa ($13) was supposed to be the world’s largest museum dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, and its architecture was as interesting as the collections.

I wanted to try a prix fixe lunch at Fyn that I had read about. No luck. It was closed for lunch that day. I asked a sous chef who was there to prepare for dinner whether she could recommend a similar restaurant & she came up with the Waterside.

Four of us ended up paying over $200 with marvelously creative and delicious drinks and tips. We could not have gotten away without paying at least twice as much in the U.S. We walked around the water front shopping area just to walk off some calories. Popular especially among young locals, there were lots of restaurants and shops to browse in,

We rushed to the next destination when we finally realized how late it got, but the Bo-Kaap Museum was already closed by the time we arrived. Bo-Kaap is a multi-ethnic historic area that is famous for the colorful houses and the cobblestone roads. Learning a bit in depth about the area from the museum could have been interesting, but, the colorful houses themselves were not as spectacular as at some other places such as Guanajuato, Mexico.

Our flight out on the last day of the trip was in early evening, so we had almost a whole day to explore more. We all packed up, checked out of the house, piled into the van around 10 in the morning & headed over to an art museum a bit out of the way from the center..

Noval Foundation (admission: around $12) was a truly impressive art complex with a gallery, a sculpture garden, a library, an outdoor amphitheater, and a restaurant. This is another example of money well spent by those who’ve earned a whole hip of money: this case a real estate tycoon, Luis Norval.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden (admission: around $12) was our last stop in Cape Town, and, it almost qualified as a case of “best for the last” except I can’t really say there is only one “best” in Cape Town area. We had lunch in one of the restaurants on site, and the quality/price of food was quite satisfactory.

It was not hard to see why this was considered one of the best botanical gardens in the world. Unlike many of the top gardens, though, people were allowed to just sit around and picnic or take a nap, and many actually did just that. We lingered as long as we could till close to our flight time since the location was on the way to the airport. Their gift shop was huge – had everything you could imagine related to gardening – and not too outrageously expensive.

5 nights/4 full days in Cape Town was enough to see the major sites, it seems. But our house in Camps Bay was the kind of place that triggers a desire to just hang out and be lazy for days. It will be fun to play a local for a couple of weeks there if an opportunity arises.

itinerary: Johannesburg -> Safari -> Victoria Falls -> Cape Town -> Cape of Good Hope -> Franschhoek -> Cape Town

May 2022

No, Johannesburg (Joburg) was not one of our top destinations. We had to be there in order to get to the places we wanted to get to: the safari and Victoria Falls.. Just a big (population: 6 million in city proper, 15 million in the metro area), boring, and not so safe a city we had been told by many people. Whenever I hear a negative generalization about a place, I tend to dig in to find a balance. My efforts here made my head spin: a big place with so many little neighborhood names to remember & the only thing everyone seemed to agree was the Apartheid Museum was a must.

All the names on this map are neighborhoods (called suburbs in South Africa) & people seemed to talk about a place in terms of a neighborhood. I don’t think this map is even comprehensive because the first hotel we stayed at was in Fordsburg and that is not even noted on the map. How could a non-local person ever know what’s where in this town! After a while, I just told myself, “just go there & see what happens!”

The adventure unfolded at the airport. In order to make our arrival to the city easy after a long flight, I had arranged with the hotel to pick us up. A nice gentleman greeted us with a sign showing our name & we followed him to the parking lot. He said the hotel van could not hold the 8 of us with all the luggage, thus, we would need 2 volunteers to stay back and wait for him to come back after dropping us off. Maximum an hour wait. OK, we accepted that. As we were getting the rhythm of early morning traffic of the biggest city in the country, we saw steam coming out of the hood of the car. Uh, oh. The driver pulled the car to a stingy shoulder area at the junction of two merging freeways and made a call somewhere. Then he slowly drove the car to a gas station nearby. You can guess the rest. Lots of waiting time and frustration. Eventually reached the hotel & the whole staff came out to welcome us with warm towels and a feast of drinks and appetizers. We were tired and cranky, but they were so nice that we could not complain too much.

We found Lilian Lofts through Airbnb, but it turned out to be an apartment hotel where rooms were very spacious, comfortable, and stylish. Fordsburg happened to be a multi ethnic area with a heavy concentration of Indians and Paskistanis. The very modern hotel stuck out in the rather modest neighborhood, but the neighbors seemed to look out for the safety of the hotel guests. Whenever a peddler or a beggar approached our group, some neighbor would yell at him. Most restaurants in the area had meat and sea food grills,with no pork or alcohol, of course. We ended up having lunch and two dinners in the area, and the meals were delicious at about $7-8 per person. We just walked into a restaurant that looked popular, and that worked.

I asked a doorman where I might be able to buy a local SIM card for my phone, and he took me to a little lady standing around near the hotel. I purchased a couple of 1 GB data SIM’s for 20 rands (USD $1.20). Despite of my doubts, they worked.

I created this map not quite knowing where we might end up going. So it has a list (purple symbols) of food & drink places, shopping venues, and museums all over town. I thought a good place to start would be an observation deck in a high rise in downtown so that we could get some idea what the city looked like. We took a cab to the address, and the building entrance was boarded up. Whatever we saw on the way there did not make us want to explore more, so we came back to the hotel and rested. The green symbols on the map shows where we actually went.

Let’s try a place a bit outside of the city. Since cabs were cheap and readily available, we ended up taking cabs every where. Uber was available, but everyone seemed to use the local version of the app (Jrney). We went to Random Harvest Indigenous Nursery. When I first came across this name, I knew I had to go there just to find out what the place was all about. It was a beautiful place with gardens filled with indigenous plants, and there was a restaurant serving wonderful meals. We had a great brunch and loved walking around the gardens. They called us cabs on their Jrney app, and we were dropped off at 4th Avenue in Parkhurst. There were nice looking cafes and inviting shops lining the street.

We kept walking northeast when the busy area ended. It was a slight uphill and the temperature was getting hot. There were big mansions in this area showing this city was literally built on gold mines. The difference between our hotel neighborhood and this neighborhood was like night and day. We did not see many people walking, either. They were probably zipping around in a German car with full air-conditioning. After an hour or so of walking around, we were ready to sit down. “DW Eleven 13” was a restaurant mentioned on several different must try restaurant lists for Joburg. You guessed it. I had to try it even just for the name! (When I checked it today, it was permanently closed.) We ordered one each of whatever was on the menu that day & our bellies as well as the eyes were very happy. This was just one example of the evidence of the high-end dining scene in Joburg. I think the final tab was under $20/person since many of these were offered as appetizers. By the way, the name came from the address.

Next stop was the Origins Center (admission: under US$4) at Wits University, one of top universities in South Africa. The entrance to the university was closely controlled by the guards, and they didn’t know why the tourists were lurking about. They had to call the Center to find out if we were, in fact, welcomed there. The displays on human evolution and rock arts were interesting enough, but we really liked the small gift shop where a lovely young lady was so happy to see us. There was an African art museum attached to the university that was supposed to be worthwhile to visit, but we were too tired.

When we came back to Joburg after the safari, we stayed at Saffron Guest House (some rooms were really spacious and nicely done) in Melville, another area with attractive cafes and restaurants and shops. We didn’t have enough time to explore the area much, but we did like the area. We stayed another night at the same guest house after coming back from Victoria Falls. One restaurant we really liked was called Bambanani. It was a family friendly restaurant which meant kids were running around etc. But they offered good, healthy food and drinks at reasonable prices.

If we had a second full day, we would have done the Apartheid Museum (admission: under US$9) and Mandela Foundation. We would have gone to the Apartheid Museum the first day we were in town except the safari program was supposed to take us there at the end. However, it was not open on that day, thus, we totally missed it. The yellow symbols on my map above show Mandela related sites.

So how was Joburg? Big, yes. Boring? There were enough interesting stuff going on. Not safe? We never felt threatened in any way even though there were some rough spots we could see around town. People were kind and polite in general. I will not go out of my way to go back there, but I would’t be sad if a circumstance is created for us to be there again.

itinerary: Johannesburg -> Safari -> Joburg -> Victoria Falls -> Joburg -> Cape Town

June 2022

We flew from Johannesburg to the city of Victoria Falls on a Zimbabwe based airline called Fastjet, and the 90 minute flight cost $220 R/T. The airport was only about 15-20 minutes drive from the city center in Victoria Falls (population: 33,600). Our lodging ($74/night) was located slightly away from downtown in a residential area filled with old colonial era big mansions. We arrived there in the early afternoon, but we were all too tired from a week of intense safari-ing, thus we stayed in the rest of the day and ate at the restaurant on site.

Fully rested, we were ready to conquer the world after a satisfying breakfast at the lodging. The going rate for a taxi to downtown was $5, and the US Dollar was happily accepted by all the merchants in town including the cab drivers. The lodging office arranged a mini bus for our group of 12 whenever we wanted to go places for $2/person. First destination: Victoria Falls National Park. Some guys were selling rain poncho rentals at the parking lot area, and we all got one ($3), which turned out to be a smart move.

There were monkeys greeting us as we were getting our entrance tickets ($30). Once inside, the trail was clearly marked by numbers. You turn left from the entrance till you find number 1 and start from there. It is about a mile from #1 to #16 mostly straight paved way along the water with turn-outs for viewing.

If you find Mr. Livingstone, you are at #1. He was the first white man to see the Falls on November 17, 1855. By #3 on the trail, you will start to feel fortunate about having bought the rain poncho rental. When we were there in early June, which was at the tail end of the best season to visit, there was still so much water that it felt like walking in a rainstorm.

I love to say if the great water falls of the world were Beethoven’s symphonies, Victoria Falls would be #5 while Iguzu Falls would be #9. The biggest (length x depth) water fall in the world, Victoria is basically one giant sheet of water wall. Camera lenses fogged over so much that we stopped taking pictures after a while. Rainbows were formed over the walkway because of the spray of water coming from the Fall. Invigorating would be the best word for me to describe the experience. It took us about 90 minutes to do the walk & we rested at a cafe restaurant inside the park by the entrance.

Some people visit the Zambia side of the Fall, but we thought we had seen enough & chose to stay in Zimbabwe. You can read our friend Bill’s experience in Livingstone, Zambia.

After returning the rain ponchos, we walked 10-15 minutes on a dirt road to our lunch spot recommended by our host at the lodging. “I don’t see any restaurant!,” Pat was saying, then we suddenly came to a parking lot.

OMG! The view from the Lookout Cafe warranted the name perfectly. Under $20/person for a nice meal with drinks.

A quick cab ride ($1) brought us to an artisans market located behind the elegant shopping center called Elephant’s Walk. It was a paradise if you loved bargaining. Very friendly and persistent merchants surrounded you to lure you into his/her store. The stuff they sold there were much better made than the ones sold on the streets, later I found out by comparing.

After a rather animated shopping experience, we were ready for a nice break. We walked slowly to the next stop, a place with good desserts recommended by a cafe owner (he could nor serve us because his cafe was to have an opening the next day), 3 Monkeys. It was an artistically decorated space with indoor and outdoor seating and great food and drinks. We liked it so much – so comfortable and relaxing and great service – that we stayed on for dinner!

Wait a minute. Are those birds on the tree? Sure they are. This will lead us to the second full day in Victoria Falls. I came across an article about a unique experience to have at a fancy hotel in town, so we took a cab to Victoria Falls Safari Lodge. Everyday at 1 PM, they have a free event called the ‘Vulture Culture experience‘ which is a feeding of vultures. They explain why they do it, then, you see hundreds of birds descend upon the meat scraps thrown on the ground.

Food and drinks at the bar in the hotel were first class and a bit pricey for Zimbabwe, but they were worth every penny. The little platform to watch the vulture experience was under this bar, so we didn’t even have to leave our own seats to see the whole thing.

A few birds started arriving around 12:30 PM. Then more. Then more.

They waited in anticipation.

Ready? He emptied the cooler on the ground.

Hundreds of vultures jumped in all at once to get a piece of the action. Why feed vultures? We typically think vultures are bad, but they are a necessary and important part in the natural cycle of life in the African landscape. However, their numbers are dwindling due to poisoning and electrocution by power lines. Poachers poison them because gathering vultures over their illegally hunted animals reveal their position to authorities.

This was quite a spectacle and a learning experience. There was a waterhole on the Safari Lodge ground where elephants and other animals came to quench the thirst. The gift shops were quite nice at the lodge as well.

Later in the day We were picked up at the lodge by the Zambezi River Sunset Cruise people & driven to a boat dock on the river. We had arranged a river cruise through our lodging and received c 10% discount (final price: $36 + $10 park fee per person.) This included bottomless drinks and snacks on the boat for 2 hours. Beyond the rainbow in the picture is the drop of the Victotia Falls.

Hippos were playing near our boat. I learned for the first time that hippos walked not swam in the water. That felt like cheating to me.

It was great to see people having a good time. They were all very friendly.

Verdict: Totally worth it!

The boat people took us to the dinner restaurant we chose, Shearwater Cafe, and we had a great meal there. “Can we come back here for breakfast?” someone asked. Nope, we had to fly back to Johhanesburg the next morning.

Victoria Falls was the most expensive over all – lodging, meals, flights – during this trip. It was also quite memorable and enjoyable. We are talking about $37 per person a night and $15-20/meal here compared to $30/night and $10-15/meal in South Africa. Considering Zimbabwe has the average wage of $253/month, the lowest in the world, we can tell how important the tourist dollars might be in their economy. For the level of comfort and quality we got in Victoria Falls, we got a bargain.

itinerary: Johannesburg -> Safari -> J-Burg -> Victoria Falls -> J-Burg -> Cape Town