Cape Town, South Africa

We drove from Windhoek to the airport at dawn. The car rental return with Europcar was quick and easy. We drove 2,637km over the past two weeks, averaging about 300km per driving day. That’s more than I imagined, and further than we drove on the South Island in NZ. Most of it was over gravel roads too. Our Toyota Fortuner held up pretty well over all the bumps, and I was was suitably impressed with our Peak Design car mount.

Check-in with Airlink was also quick and easy. We had some time to kill cause everything had been so quick, so grabbed a cappuccino and croissant before dumping our water and going through security and immigration.

Windhoek’s international airport is pretty small - there were only eight gates, and about ten departures today. Checked out the souvenir shops and used up our remaining Namibian dollars.

The flight to Cape Town took under two hours. Airlink served a decent meal again - they’re a really good regional airline. Not sure what I will do with my Skybucks frequent flyer points though.

The immigration line up at Cape Town was huge - it looked like all the big jets from Europe arrived just before us. We took bets, Heather won with a guess of 1h15 that was almost bang-on. (I had guessed 2h, and Marissa 1h30). The immigration officer was very friendly once we actually got to the front of the line, maybe cause we’re commonwealth.

As expected, our luggage was waiting for us (I had checked the AirTags so we knew it had made it here). Customs waved us through and then we searched for our driver. The poor guy had been waiting the whole time, holding up the sign with our names for the past 90 minutes as passengers slowly streamed out. Marissa quickly got a SIM card, and then we were off.

Got a whirlwind tour of Cape Town on the drive into the hotel. We’re staying at Derwent Boutique Hotel in the Tamboerskloof neighbourhood of Cape Town, walking distance to all the restaurants along Kloof St.

Relaxed the rest of the afternoon, and then met up for the NYE mini-celebration at 5pm for the hotel guests. Chatted with the owners, who are Canadian. At 6pm we left for dinner at the Black Sheep, we had the early seating and had to be done by 8pm. The food and service were excellent, with an amazing view of Table Mountain as a bonus. (All the restaurants we are dining at in Cape Town are recommendations from the hotel owners).

We stayed up until midnight to celebrate the New Year for the first time in years. We had a nice view of the fireworks over the V&A Waterfront from our deck. The air had cooled to about 18C, very comfortable for sleeping.