November 3, 2024
Day 32: Into Cape Town
Our second try at leaving Hermanus was more successful. Still no whales.
It's lovely here, mountains on one side, sea on the other. And wind all around.
We rolled along the road towards Betty's Bay. The last few kilometres were straight into the teeth of a gale and took... a while. Pretty, but windy. There was a sign for penguins. Hermanus had lots of signs for whales, but we saw none. Doubtful we’d see a penguin, we had to stop. It turns out there's a colony of penguins here, and a restaurant. We ate fish and chips and watched penguins. Win #1 for the day!
After lunch the wind hadn't died down. But we thought we could manage it to Strand. As we pulled out of Betty's Bay it felt like a bad idea. We only had 60km to go but could only manage a speed of around 10km/h pushing into the wind.
The scenery went from great to stunning. This has to be one of the best coastal roads. Clinging onto the edge of the mountain, sometimes only barely above the sea level the road undulates around the coast. Over the bay, we could see Table Mountain peeking through the clouds.
Suddenly, someone turned the wind off. It was very strange, we were pushing directly into this gale, and suddenly it felt like the wind was going over or around us. We could still see the front approaching over the water, but we were suddenly back up to a normal cruising speed (and not having to fight constantly). Great!
More nice scenery for about an hour. Up and down. Past road works - looks like the road has been washed off the mountain in a few parts and reclaimed by the sea in others. SA government was putting it back together though, although not today, it's Saturday.
As we started to approach Strand, it was getting late in the day. The light was starting to dim. Seemed a bit quicker than expected. Then we saw the clouds closing in. It wasn't that late, but the heavy clouds make it look like twilight. And the wind swung around 180 degrees. Suddenly we had a tail wind. Not sure if it was a change in weather, the local impact of the mountains, or a favourable deity, but we weren't going to complain. The expected after lunch 6 hour trip turned into about 3 hours, and we sailed down into Strand. Win #2!
Part way through Strand, we were waiting patiently to turn left at the robot (set of traffic lights). Suddenly the gentleman in the car in front of us jumped out and came running towards us. "Take this! I know it's not much" Waving something at us. Reflexively we took what was being waved at us, but didn't really process what was happening until he'd jumped back in his car and driven off.
That was weird. We looked at each other. That hasn't happened before.
He'd passed us 20 Rand (about 1USD, a bit less than 2AUD). He's was right, it wasn't much. About the price of a loaf of sliced white bread. But it made us wonder what we looked like. Do we look like we need desperately need a handout? Maybe Cath looked like she really needed a drink (or a loaf of bread). Strange and completely unexpected and took us completely by surprise. I think we must have stammered thank you at the time, but in case we were still in shock and didn't - thank you, whoever you were.
Win #3 (?)
We finished off with a definite win - we are being hosted for a few days by Amanda, our South African Angel who has been giving us plenty of advice via WhatsApp / Facebook about routes to take and places to avoid. We'll have to stay a few days and get the skinny on how to get into and out of Cape Town (without getting mugged).
Today's ride: 105 km (65 miles)
Total: 1,323 km (822 miles)
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