[mpksuhas]

South Africa was always in 'To visit' list for me. I am not sure when the dream to visit the country was born, I guess it was since South Africa was there in news and history alike while growing up.

In geography books as part of Cape of good hope, in history books as the place where MK Gandhi turned in to Mahatma Gandhi, then in news related to one of the most influential leaders in our lifetime - Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid, on Indian passports which had specific mention that its valid for visit to all countries apart from South Africa, as India was not recognizing the apartheid government.

Writing in Apartheid museum mentioning about role India played


How India was one of the vocal opponents to South Africa being part of International cricket council and how SA were banned for 21 years till 1991. Also when the ban was revoked, India - South Africa ODI will become the first international match they will play past ban.

Anti Apartheid poster urging for boycott of South African Cricket



Then later, when I used to spend insane amount of time watching TV as a youngster glued to National Geographic & Discovery channel, was fascinated about the wildlife of that country and its neighbor's.

So around start of 2024 when we were finalizing on vacation plans for this year, we thought of finalizing on South Africa. When this plan was discussed with few friends and relatives, my sister in law mentioned that they (SIL, brother in law and niece) were also interested in visiting South Africa. However, they are settled in Canada, meaning the school vacation is in August. Hence we decide to shift the trip timing to August instead of March / April as earlier thought of.

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Itenary

Below is the plan that we had made, however the actual day wise plan was slightly different in Cape Town based on weather conditions of each day.




We plan a trip over 2 weeks time. Our first location will be Cape Town, due to the legendary unpredictable weather there, we decide to have ample additional time there and hence keep 1 week to roam around there.

We were to reach Cape Town on a Saturday, SIL and family will be reaching only on the Wednesday after that, so till that time we will stay at a Airbnb near city center, try to cover most places as possible. Prior to others joining, we planned to rent a car, move to a bigger space on east coast of Cape Town and then have a relaxed itenary past that.

Plus since we will be meeting SIL and family after a while, we wanted to have a relaxed trip so that we get to spend some time with them too instead of being on the move always.

After a week in Cape Town, we planned to fly down to Johannesburg, get a self drive car from airport and head to Kruger national park. After spending 4 days there, we will return to Johannesburg, spend 2 days sightseeing there and then travel back to India.

Visa & flight bookings

For Indian passport holders, there is E Visa facility available. However, the website has a mind of its own and the approvals are erratic and not guaranteed. Visa chargers are nil for Indian passport holders though, hence thought of trying out the E Visa option since we have few months till the trip. If that doesn't work out, the back up plan was to go via consulate.

South Africa Visa link

There is a 600+ page thread on TripAdvisor related to the issues faced by people with this E visa website. There is a murmur to have Visa on arrival for Indian passport holders, it may take a while, but till that happens, its a pain to get visa done.

Luckily for us, the visa got approved exactly 1 month after we applied. The validity was for 2 months and with multiple entry.


Flight
Surprisingly, for all the historical connections, there is no direct flights between any city in India to South Africa.
Based on our travel time, we were having broadly 3 options:
1. Connecting flight via any of the 3 middle east Asian giants (Emirates, Qatar, Etihad)
2. Connecting flight of Kenya airways (Mumbai & Bangalore)
3. Connecting flight of Ethiopian airways (Mumbai & Bangalore)

We decided to take the 3rd option of Ethiopian airways since this has the shortest transit travel and transit time.

For return, we booked Johannesburg - Bangalore of Etihad airways. Since Johannesburg is a bigger town, there are more flight options from there compared to Cape Town, also its slightly cheaper since J'Berg is a slightly shorter flight than Cape Town.

However, during booking I made a deviation from my usual rule of only booking directly from airline sites since my card payment was not working in the Ethiopian airways site. Later I made out that the reason was since the daily international limit was set low for my card by me, I just had to increase it and try again. However, in the hurry to close the booking, I thought of checking in any aggregator sites - in this case, found the same flight in Clear trip. Since Ethiopian airways is part of Star Alliance along with Air India, this flight is displayed as an Air India code share.

Fast forward to 2 days before our trip, I try to do web check-in and is confused to find that only our first leg of the flight Bangalore - Addis Ababa is only displayed, there is no mention of Addis Ababa - Cape Town mentioned anywhere.

Call up Clear trip and check, they ask to check with Air India. Air India customer care checked and mentioned that the connecting flight has got changed. While I had booked, the connecting flight was to start at 07.30 AM from Addis Ababa, however since June this fight now starts at 08.15 AM, basically a 45 mins change in timing, which is fine, just that my transit time gets longer a bit.
However, on top of the change in timing, Ethiopian airways also changed the flight number. For some reason, update to new flight number didn't happen automatically to our PNR and hence was showing only the first leg of the flight.

Air India customer care person mentioned to me that since the flight linking to PNR has to be done from the Ethiopian airways side, it has to be done at time of check-in since there is no way they can update the same.

Hence I visited airport a day before the trip and checked with the Ethiopian airways booking office there, they were equally clueless on how to deal with this. However, they mentioned that my connecting flight details are shown in their system, hence they will be able to print boarding pass with the new flight number. Not fully convinced, but with no way out, we decide to try our luck on the day of the trip.

03-Aug-24

Reached airport, went to check-in counter, they look up the PNR and is able to find the booking till Cape Town, however they are unable to print boarding pass till there. Confused, they ask us to wait and contact their helpdesk. Around an hour pass and they call us back, try printing boarding pass again. However, this time, our baggage tags come with destination as Cape Town, but boarding pass for first leg only is getting printed. Again some discussion and calls happen, finally they mention that they are unable to update the new flight number from here since they are a third party group (not Ethiopian airways employees) hence this has to be done from the transit helpdesk at Addis Ababa. With no other option available, we decide to try our luck.

If this was in any other airline / country, we would not have been much concerned, the worst is, one day will have to spend in airport till the alternative flight is arranged. However, issue with being in Ethiopia for more than 12 hours is that the yellow fever vaccine rule kicks in. That means, South Africa will treat it as a stay instead of transit and will require yellow fever vaccine certificate for clearing immigration.

Anyways, we reached Addis Ababa, head to helpdesk, the person there also is not able to update the flight details, thankfully, he calls up someone on phone and is able to sort it out in few minutes. Got the boarding pass and soon find out that our flight is overbooked already and few who came after us had to wait at gate hoping they are able to get seats in place of any cancellations.

Flight from Bangalore to Addis Ababa was for 5.30 hours and was operated by a B-787 aircraft.



We land at Addis Ababa at around 05.00 AM, however its drizzling and is dark outside. The airport is fairly large, with lot many connecting flights to neighboring countries operating out of there.




The airport has a very functional design, nothing fancy. It was fairly busy, however not crowded.




There are considerable number of Chinese nationals who are using this airport, so much so, that there is a helpdesk counter specifically for Chinese national. Also, the airport mostly was funded by Chinese, look at the signboards which has Mandarin texts.



Our onward flight, a B787



We push off on time, but there are a bunch of flights in line to take off. This adds to around 15 mins of delay.




We get glimpse of Addis Ababa from the air, its a fairly large city. We had a plan of stopping over for a day on our way back initially. However decided to drop it for a later time due to time constraints.

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Since this entire trip was done at a relaxed itenary, I am NOT going by a day by day account. Instead will go based on each location.

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Cape Town airport

We land at Cape Town at 13.45, its bright and sunny




Does naming a wide body aircraft as XL amount to fat shaming?



The immigration counter at airport is chaotic, queue took around 2 hours to clear. By time we get out and collect baggage, its around 15.45 PM.




We get an Uber to our place of stay- An Airbnb near to town center. Ubers are pretty reliable and cheap in South Africa we found out, payment was all done though credit card, hence no issues of cash transactions too.

Just note, that Uber pickup location is fixed as Parklade - P1, however in the app it displays P2 also. Since we were near to P2, we went ahead and booked with that, however when cab was assigned, we noticed that it was displaying as P1 instead.
Both these are just 5 mins walk from each other and Cape Town airport as such is a smaller one, hence nothing to be bothered about much. Just that you keen an eye for P1.

On way to place of stay, we cross the hospital named after Dr Christiaan Barnard. Though not at this hospital, the first human to human heart transplant was done at Cape Town by Dr Christiaan Barnard.

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Though its difficult to be surprised by how a town looks nowadays since you get a fair good idea of the same thanks to YouTube videos, I was not expecting Cape Town to look this 'European'.

The architecture & color themes of apartment buildings were more European.

Our stay at Cape town was split across two locations.

Stay 1


Our stay for first 3 days was at an Airbnb as mentioned earlier located inside the town, this was a clean and convenient place. Would suggest this if you are traveling alone or as a couple.
The owner of the place was waiting for us, she handed over keys and also gave few tips on general topics related to safety, transport and points of interest.

Airbnb link

View from our apartment -
The tall mountain is Lions peak, a trekking location which we will take few days later.



Apartment interior pics








Stay 2

For the reminder of the days, our stay was bit out of town center, on south east cost.

https://www.airbnb.co.in/rooms/90430...8-a17cb237b88d

This place though some 40 mins out of town was beautiful. If you have time to spend in Cape Town, would definitely suggest to stay at this place / around this locality or even around Hermanus, which I have heard is equally beautiful.

[mpksuhas]

Sea side Promenade area

Location

This walking path of around 2KM's is a beautiful location to walk in evening / morning. Lot many locals can be seen jogging, playing with their pets around here.

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V&A water front

Location

This is an upmarket area of the town, the waterfront here has a shopping mall and also lot many food outlets around.







While we were there, India - Britain Hockey was in progress at Paris Olympics and it was streamed in the amphitheater there.




Towards the side where aquarium is located, we spotted lot many seals basking in the sun.




There are many office spaces and hotels in this locality







Nobel Square has statues of all South African Nobel prize laurates

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Robben Island

Location

This island houses the jail at which Nelson Mandela spent maximum of his prison life. Imagine this as a South African version of Cellular Jail of Port Blair, however this is located comparatively much closer to main land.

Infact, the island is visible from hills around Cape Town




There is boat service to island, ticket to which has guided tour to the island also included. Ferry starts from V&A water front. Tickets are both available there and also online.

Location

Online ticket booking link

Its suggested to book tickets in advance since they tend to get sold out in advance. We had booked the tickets and were looking forward for the trip, however, unfortunately our booking was cancelled due to bad weather. Infact, for the whole week while we were there, only on couple of days the ferry was working due to rough sea.

Hence we were not able to reschedule the visit also. This was one of the two places which we had to skip in Cape Town due to bad weather.

The second one being Table mountain.

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Table Mountain

Location

The second place at Cape Town which we had to skip due to bad weather and maintenance related shutdown of cable car.

Table mountain as seen from Signal hill.



While the shutdown of cable car was known to us prior to our trip, we were planning on trekking the mountain. There are multiple routes to trek up the hill, some say 5 others say 6, not sure of the exact count. However one thing I had made out was that, the toughest and dangerours route up the hill is the one called as India Venster hiking trail.

The relatively easier one is the one called as Plattekilp Gorge hiking trail. To reach the starting point, one has to drive past the cable car ticket counter and park next to road here.

From different forums and videos I was assuming that the trek will take at maximum 3 hours one side and around 5 hours return. This is based on a conservative estimates. I have seen videos where people doing this in 3 hours return. However, I wanted to have a 5 hour window where weather is clear, since lot many people had warned that weather on top can suddenly change and start raining.

Since there was no backup of using cable car to climb down in case it rains and if it rains, the trek back over rocks is going to be very dangerous, I had to skip the trek plan. Almost all days we were there it was raining either in early morning or late evening, hence had to drop the idea of trek.

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Bo Kaap

Location

This is the Malay area of Cape Town, famous for its colorful houses. A note, when you search for this locality in Google, it will redirect you few lanes inside the locality.

However, the houses famous in photos are next to hotel Bismillah, location of which is shared above.
Also, if you are driving, you get parking space around here. Added bonus, food at Bismillah is good.


Had come across multiple instances of people complaining about snatch and run instances around this area. Hence do stick to the main lanes only for safety. The roads around hotel are frequented by tourists and locals alike, hence didn't felt any risk over there.

[mpksuhas]

Oranjezicht City Farm Market

Location

Open only on Saturday & Sunday, this is a market located at walkable distance from V&A.

There is a big parking lot next to market too.




Entrance to market is rather inconspicuous. Note the market timings on both the parking and entrance signages.




The market has wide variety of items on sale, I was of impression that since its called as Farm market, it will mostly be farm produce.
However, there was apparel, bakery, pottery items too along with fruits, flowers & food shops.












It took us around 1.5 hours to roam around here, would recommend visiting here.



Mojo Market

Location


This is a food court that is very popular towards this side of town. Not a must visit, however, if you are staying towards this side of town, like it was in case of us, would recommend you to visit here for dinner.
We liked the food there and also, there is a wide variety of cuisines you can select from. Also on most days, there are live bands playing.

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District Six Museum

Location

This museum explains the history of Cape Town, especially around the time where non whites were forcefully moved out of their houses in the city and shifted to locality outside the city. Its considered as a racial cleansing of the city's prime combined with an elaborate land grab scheme.

The museums exhibits are street signs and belongings of houses which once stood there. There is a guided tour which is run by people who lived there before the eviction took place.


There is ticket for entry, which can be paid by card.














Like us, if you were driving down to the museum, you can use the paid parking in next lane to avoid trouble of searching around for parking.

Parking location

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Signal hill

Location

This is a vantage point which overlooks the city. Somewhat similar to Table mountain (mentioned earlier) & Lions head peak (mentioned below).

Also, all three of these peaks are next to each other. However, signal hill is considerably smaller than other two and also can be visited by vehicle.

Its a paragliding spot too.



Lions head peak in the background




There is a food truck, a Tata 407.




View of city from the hill.



The stadium is the one which hosted FIFA Worldcup.

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Muizenberg Beach

Location

This beach is located half hour drive away from city center, famous for its colorful changing rooms, one can spot surfers in hordes over here.

You can combine this beach along with your trip to Cape Point / Boulder beach, since its roughly in same direction.

Again as elsewhere, sufficient parking space available next to beach.

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Kalk Bay


Location

The very next beach to Muizenberg Beach, Kalk Bay is more famous for its lighthouse which is part of many of stormy weather pics and Kalky's which is a famous fish and chips restaurant.

Again, both are not must visit locations and can skip if you are short on time.

Lighthouse




Kalkys has a beautiful open seating area too. However, they don't accept credit cards.