Heading into South Africa we had heard plenty of horror stories from people we’ve met on our journey (especially South America), friends, and coworkers… from people’s Airbnbs getting robbed in the middle of the night, carjackings, muggings, taxi drivers heading in the wrong direction on purpose, etc. The list of stories goes on and on, but we were pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed our time in Cape Town and never felt unsafe during those few days. Just a good reminder to us as we continue to travel the world to always look for the good in people. 

After landing in Cape Town, we grabbed our rental car and figured out real quick how to navigate on the opposite side of the road. It is a different feeling when you’re used to being on the left side of the car driving and the right side of the road. But Grant picked it up quick! He only occasionally would mix up the wipers and the turn signals – they also switch which side of the steering wheel they are each on.

Heading to the Airbnb, we met up with Grant’s friend, Tim, who had quite the journey to get there. After about 26 hours of flying (across 2 planes), he landed around 4 am and headed to our Airbnb to try and drop his bag off. However, they had told him there wasn’t a reservation so he ended up hopping around different coffee shops along the road in the pouring rain along with a 2 hour Thai massage before it was time to check in to the loft. We met up with Tim around 3pm when he could finally get into the apartment and take a much needed nap after such a journey and long day without sleep. The apartment offered a pretty view of Lion’s Head (pictured below) and a portion of the ocean to the left of us. 

We ended up taking that afternoon to rest and unpack for the next few days before heading out to grab some dinner. We quickly learned it was best to make a reservation for dinner in Cape Town (though we never did) so we would just endure the wait times. We decided on a ramen restaurant and had a 30-45 minute wait time so we hopped on into the Mexican restaurant (Uno Mas) next door for a drink. Turned out to be one of the best spicy margaritas I’ve ever had (nothing beats the mango habanero one in Hermosa though). Uno Mas only allowed us to sit at the bar for half an hour and our table wasn’t quite ready yet so we hopped across the street and grabbed another drink at a karaoke bar. The bartender was quite up to date on his world politics and spent the majority of the time ranting about different topics from the Ukraine-Russia conflict, to American politics, to the load shedding problem in South Africa. We didn’t realize this was such a big problem until we realized restaurants around us had lost power, including the one we had been waiting for. It seemed like most restaurants had back-up generators to at least keep the kitchen running with some combination of dimmed lighting and/or candles to keep the tables lit during times of power outage. We learned from numerous locals that the country for 10+ years has not had enough power to serve the entire country at once, especially in peak hours, so they have to create 2-hour periods where portions of the cities/country have blackouts. There’s even an app to track when your region will next be without power. We also learned (and later were told the same in Namibia) that the government of South Africa exports power to neighbors Namibia and Botswana because they “more reliably pay than some of South Africa” – though a lady we met later in the week semi-joked that she paid her power bill last time she checked yet doesn’t always get power. Our karaoke bartender felt strongly that the previous government warned the newest government of the problems and the newer leaders just pocketed any cash rather than trying to fix the problem.

After spending another thirty minutes at this bar and listening to a couple of songs sung by the bar staff (which turned out to be a requirement when working there), it was finally time to grab our meal. May not have been Jinya worthy ramen (our favorite ramen in LA), but still worth the visit nonetheless. It was then back to the apartment with our first night time walk in Cape Town (and like I said we never really felt unsafe).