Sunday, February 24, 2008

Hello 2008!

I really like being somewhere else for new years eve. It's one of those holidays that seems to let a lot of people down but when you are somewhere else it is always exciting, fun and different. We really didn't have a plan this year which we were all fine with. After a big day driving to the Cape and seeing penguins and amazing views we thought we would head to the V&A waterfront, grab a snack at a bar and watch the crowds. So after getting ready and having Dayne make us cocktails we started calling for a cab- just like anywhere it was going to take hours. And then we found a card in the apartment for Ernest cab. Within 15 minutes he was outside our gate and taking us to the Waterfront! Ernest cab would become our best find in Cape Town- picking us up later that night with only a 20 min wait and telling the lines of people he was our private cab, always knowing where places were, waiting for us while we went into shops, getting us to the front of the 2 hour queue at Table Mountain and doing multiple trips to the airport.



We rang in the new year with thousands of others listening to fireworks and
playing with our noise makers and being very warm and happy that we were outside! Oh and we snuck into a private party after and drank free champagne :)

We had lots of advice from friends and friends of friends about Cape Town- what to do, what to be careful of and what to see. Everyone told us to get out to the beaches as they are beautiful. No one told us that Jan 1st is the day that black people celebrate by going to all the beaches (it was only 10 years ago that they weren't allowed on the beach) and making it an all day festival. Of course that doesn't mean that you can't go too- and we did- it just made for quite an interesting day! The crowds were so thick and the roads were completely at a stand still. There were lines for shared cabs that were over 1 mile long. And not an inch of beach, sidewalk, grass, etc was free of people, kids, blankets, lawn chairs, picnics and umbrellas.


We decided to wait for traffic to die down by heading out for a nice sundowner at a beautiful hotel south of the beaches called The Twelve Apostles Hotel.



The view and the cocktails were great however the traffic never did die down so by the time we got all the way back to our apartment it was late and we all decided that Nando's peri peri chicken and some E television was in order!

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