Overlanding across Africa and beyond : 4x4plus2.com

24 September 2008 to 28 January 2009

To Erinvale
The border crossing was simplicity itself. Unusually for a border crossing, almost immediately the scenery changed; spring flowers lined the roadsides, everywhere the result of an abundance of rain, a feature of the Cape during the winter, were to be seen.

We arrived at Peter’s house at Erinvale, a secure, very upmarket golfing estate, on the edge of Somerset West and about a 40 minutes drive from Cape Town, on 25 September. The house was literally head and shoulders above the rest, being at the top of a rise to a nature reserve at the base of the Helderberg Mountains. It was amazing; overlooked by the Helderberg Mountains and with views from the front to the sea at Strand and False Bay beyond, whilst the patio at the rear looked out onto the mountains and Peter’s swimming pool. Sheer heaven!

Whale watching, Hermanus


Whale, Hermanus


Peter's Pool


Peter's Patio


A 'champagne Day', the Helderberg from Peter's patio

September 2008
The following day we celebrated Peter’s ... with two Peter’s, we will follow family custom and call Liz’s brother, Peter, and the other, PJ ...we celebrated PJ’s 60 birthday at the nearby, swanky restaurant, Rust en Vrede. Peter treating this as a welcome and birthday combined, kindly paid for the meal; thereafter we would be going Dutch (no pun intended!). The area around Somerset West was stuffed with wineries, most of whom had an excellent restaurant with inventive chefs, superb menus based upon a fusion of the best that Europe and Africa could offer, accompanied by a selection of wines from the their estate and the local area. The whole Winelands area was a foodies and oenophile’s delight; it would also have delighted a Scotsman (apologies Nick!), it was all ridiculously cheap. Peter promised to take us each Sunday to a different restaurant for lunch whilst we were with him; he did and they were uniformly excellent. It was also a perfect opportunity to meet Peter’s friends on the estate.

Dutch gabled entrance to historic farmhouse, Boschendal

Over the next three days, with Peter as our tour guide, we first visited the Whale Festival at Hermanus. From August large numbers of female Southern Right whales come to give birth in the waters of the bay and then spend the next two or three months there, close inshore .. often within a hundred feet or so... raising their young and preparing them for the long return trip to the Antarctic.

Make that call,eggphone,Hermanus

Then, two days later, we went on what was to be the first of many trips to the Victoria and Albert Waterfront in Cape Town. The Waterfront is the inspired 1990’s conversion of Cape Town’s original Victorian harbour area; with the harbour at its centre and retaining the original wharf and warehouse structure, it is now a pleasant complex of malls, galleries, cinemas, popular indoor and outdoor restaurants (with fresh fish to die for!) and a five star hotel. A great success, The Waterfront is now the most popular attraction on the Cape Peninsula and copied, but not bettered, throughout South Africa.

Victoria & Alfred Waterfront Mall in a converted warehouse.Cape Town

October 2008
Liz’s birthday on 2 October was celebrated at lunch on a wine estate opposite Erinvale. Vergelegen, established in the early 1700’s by the Cape’s notorious Dutch governor, Van der Stel (after whom Stellenbosch is named), was the only wine estate to be visited by the Queen during her 1995 state visit. We ate a superb lunch in the small restaurant named after the last owner of the estate, Lady (Florence) Phillips, and Liz took a great liking to one of the estate white wines, Lady Florence!

Peter, always keen to take us to Western Cape events and show us the sights, suggested we return to The Waterfront on the 7 October to see the Esmeralda, a Chilean Navy sail training ship that was paying a courtesy call. The harbour is host to all sorts of ships and is often a staging point in round-the-world races. At the same time as the Esmeralda’s visit, one of Bill Gates’ partners was staying at the mega expensive quayside Cape Grace Hotel, his boat moored alongside!

The flowers and colours of spring were all around us and, to make the most of what the Cape had to offer, on 14 October we visited the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens nestling at the base of Table Mountain. Established in 1913, on land left to the nation by Cecil Rhodes, Kirstenbosch’s Charter, unique at the time, was, and remains, to conserve and display only the indigenous flora of South Africa. We wanted to see the spring flowering display of fynbos, the Cape plant species found nowhere else in the world and in particular the sub species, protea. The Cape is a unique biodiversity hotspot in that it is home to a plant kingdom contained within one specific area of one country; the other kingdoms are continental or transcontinental. Kirstenbosch’s unique importance in this regard was recognised by being the first botanical garden in the world to become a UNESCO World Heritage site.

On the 24th we drove to a notorious township-cum-squatter camp on the outskirts of Cape Town. The Cape townships were spawned by the iniquities of apartheid; set up in the Cape Flats, a barren flat wasteland outside Cape Town, they were dormitories providing cheap labour for white Cape Town and part of an attempt to curtail black migration into the area. No African was allowed to settle permanently west of a river line some 600 miles away; men could not be accompanied by their wives and black women banned from working in Cape Town. The deliberate lack of facilities or social focus and the extensive use of men-only hostels during the apartheid era are at the root of many of the areas problems today. Since black freedom or ‘democracy’ as the conclusion of the freedom struggle is euphemistically called, the population of the townships has been swollen by the unending influx of migrants from all over Southern Africa.

Khayelitsha township

Squatter camps were now a fact of life in Khayelitsha, now housing anything up to a million people and where an annual Festival was being held in a large modern sports hall. The Festival was a chance to display the more positive aspects of life in this ramshackle, crime ridden sink of humanity, peopled by those desperate to leave the ranks of the have-nots. There was a strong police presence in the area around the hall, so we parked Boris and walked around the immediate area of Khayelitsha feeling fairly safe. Once inside the hall it was noisy, slightly chaotic and full of stalls; some promoting this and that worthy cause, whilst others were manned by smiling African mamas selling handmade crafts. Much to the delight of a couple of stall holders, we bought up a large part of their stock of beaded angels and Christmas trees as favours for Louisa and Nick’s wedding.

The weekend before we returned to London and a hectic round of reunions and wedding preparations, we went with Peter to a picture postcard village nestling in a bowl in the Overberg Mountains. Greyton, a hikers Mecca, was holding its annual Rose Festival; the Village Hall and small church were full of scent of roses, the delightful floral displays a sensory delight.

It was such a lovely day we spent some time walking the main road, a dirt track, admiring the sun drenched, picturesque spring gardens of the old bungalows; strange to think that in a few days we would be in London and the cold, damp, gloom of late autumn!

November 2008
Through Andy’s network of contacts we were able to lodge for free in a ground floor flat on Lavender Hill .. those of a certain age may remember the Ealing Studios’ film!.. The occupant was away on NGO work in Sri Lanka and only too happy to have the place occupied. Only a five minute walk from Clapham Junction Station, the flat was so well located that, if not the world, then London was our oyster. Once we had reclaimed, temporarily, Liz’s car from Sam, we were free to intersperse visits to the bride-to-be in Greenwich, with family reunions elsewhere in England.

Liz was able to see her children and grandchildren (the youngest, Lily, born whilst we were in Africa!) when visiting a remarkably relaxed and suitably radiant bride-to-be. After which it was all down to a few days of serious mother and daughter pre-wedding work, whilst Peter, upon whom Louisa had conferred the tremendous honour of ‘giving away the bride’, spent time at Waterstones’ in Piccadilly going through the wedding speeches section!

The 2 November was Lily’s Naming Day and held in a packed terraced house in Godmanchester. Lily was, by common agreement, deemed to be ‘absolutely adorable’. The run up to the day of the wedding (14 November) just flew by; Peter, between helping out and speech writing, was able to spend time with daughter Pip; Liz coping with the pressure, enjoyed some time off with close friends in Chobham and survived Louisa’s hen night; Louisa, well she was as happy and radiant as ever and, it has to be said, just so well organised.

Hen night threesome,Covent Garden

The wedding service, reception and speeches were absolutely the best .. according to our unbiased opinion! It was also a great chance to meet up with our extended family; for Peter to get reacquainted with his granddaughter, Serena, and for us all get to grips with some Scottish dancing and a gay Gordon or two ... now, now!

With the bridesmaids, Royal Naval College,Greenwich

Three days later and we were touching down at Cape Town airport. After a period of time relaxing on Peter’s patio and in his pool, we began to prepare Boris for the final trip we would be taking with Susanne and Philippe. They had completed their journey through Tanzania and Zambia and we were due to join up with them again on the 2 of December in the South African National Park of Addo, spending about two weeks working our way back westwards to Cape Town. After which Susanne and Philippe would head for Windhoek, store the Landy and fly home in time for Christmas.

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