Ailsa and Andy’s Travels: Day 55

It’s our last day in South Africa today, and the last day of our big holiday before the 8,600 mile trip home.

There’s so much to see and do in and around Capetown, 5 days didn’t do it justice so we will definitely have to visit again. With the big trip tomorrow, we decided to have a quieter day and after breakfast we hopped in the courtesy shuttle bus to Camps Bay which is 5 minutes down the coast.

Camps Bay is a lovely seaside town with lovely restaurants and shops. We had a walk along the beach watching the ominous clouds which seemed to be moving towards the area. We ducked into a restaurant for lunch on the beach front and watched the comings and goings on the beachfront. We saw 7 men squeeze into the back of a covered pickup truck where they sat on bench seats and ate their lunch. Acrobats stopped every so often along the pavement and did all sorts of tumbling, balancing and somersaults before moving on. One man appeared by the beach palm trees and started wrapping wire round the trunk of one palm. He then went to the next palm tree which was about 10 metres away and wrapped the other end of the wire round it, to make a wire washing line. We spent some time contemplating what he was going to do with his wire line - we thought perhaps hang some art work or craft of some sort on it. Wrong! Next thing, he whipped off his T shirt and proceeded to walk along the wire, stopping every so often to breath fire or do a jump, unfortunately for him he hadn’t attached his wire properly and one jump too many nearly did some damage to his Crown Jewels as he plummeted to the ground. There was no deterring him and he jumped back up, reattached his wire and started all over again - walking along the wire from one tree to the other successfully this time!

We had a walk along the beach in the opposite direction after lunch, reaching a huge ocean filled salt water pool. The sun wasn’t out today and it was quite windy so there weren’t many takers brave enough to go for a dip. There was one man swimming when we sat down on the beachside bench but he didn’t stay in for long. The next brave souls were another two gents, I think perhaps a father and grown up son. The father was “rotund” to say the least and the son completely the opposite. The dad stripped off and waded out into the pool, disappearing under the water for a dook. The son (probably around 18years old) tip toed into the water, shivering as he did. He ducked under the water and promptly exited the pool to warm up!

It was back to the hotel to pack this afternoon and then dinner. This evening, in the restaurant we had the loveliest waitress called Nozipho, which means “many gifts” or blessings. Nozipho told us all about her Zulu culture and each time she visited our table we had more questions for her which she happily answered. In Zulu culture, 80% of the men have more than one wife, the women make beer for the men at home, women have a dowry of 10 cows when they marry and there is a Zulu king who decides what punishment will be inflicted upon people who do wrong - these were amongst some of the tiny insights we had into Zulu culture tonight!