The day started early in Amsterdam since I managed just a couple of 2 hour stretches of sleep last night at the Amsterdam Sheraton - meanwhile Terry slept the sleep of the dead and didn’t wake up until 5:30 am this morning! We had a lovely breakfast in the Club Room - including excellent fresh made capuccino coffees and freshly scrambled eggs. We then walked across the street and checked in for our 11hr 25min flight to Cape Town departing just after 10:00 am. It amazes me that there is no security in Amsterdam (apart from Boarding Pass check) until you go into the departure lounge for your particular flight.
We left almost on time, the plane was jam packed, every seat filled. You can ponder (like we did) why there are almost no black people on the flight to Cape Town - almost everyone was white - in comparison with the flights from Amsterdam that we usually take where more than half the passengers are black. I guess the impact of apartheid will last for generations yet.
We watched about 4 films on the plane, snoozed for an hour or two, ate two meals and 1 snack and arrived in the dark which meant we couldn’t really get a layout of the city but there are lots of lights. The flight was cloudy outside much of the time, we flew essentially dead straight from Amsterdam to Capetown which meant at times we could see the coast of Namibia.
Cape Town airport handles both domestic and international flights - a huge modern airport which was expanded last year for the incredibly successful 2010 Soccer World Cup - it’s very large, clean and modern - with such stores and outlets as La Senza, Jeep, Mr Submarine etc - you could be anywhere in the world. We were met by Ilios Travel - someone must have told him we had lots of luggage (not true) since he arrived with a nice new Toyota passengers van pulling a covered luggage trailer - and there was just Terry and I! Turns out he had just finished transferring a family of 7 to their hotel.
The drive to the airport passes through through 2 shanty towns (or Townships) one called Moon and the other called Sun (I can’t remember the Afrikaans names). The townships were where the residents were moved during the apartheid era - the townships are called coloured if they are mixed white and blacks, or black for all black. I am quite sure we will know a lot more by Thursday when we leave Cape Town and fly to Durban. The Government has been building new homes for the underprivileged but can’t keep up with the need. In addition the influx of refugees from other African countries means the need is growing faster than it can be helped.
On that sad note I am off to bed to get ready for an exciting day in Cape Town tomorrow. We are comfortably ensconced in the Welgelegen Guest House - about 20 minutes from the airport on major well developed highways, just 10 minutes form the centre of town with apparently lots of restaurants and shopping on Kloof Street just around the corner. Alex the front desk Manager escorted us to our room - through a dining room (about 10 very nicely set up tables) and two large living areas. We shall be down for breakfast at 7:30 tomorrow morning and ready to be picked up for our Cape Peninsula tour at 8am.
No comments:
Post a Comment