Travel to Cape Town

The trip to Simon's Town South Africa from Memphis took about 30 hours. I spent a little more for the seats with extra room for the over seas flight which was well worth it. It was much easier to sleep, or toss and turn in my case. The flight from Atlanta to J'burg was delayed for an hour and half which made me miss my connecting flight from J'burg to Cape Town. Other than the change ticket fee and extra baggage fees the trip was better than ones in the past. They have an extensive assortment of tv shows and movies now.

In Memphis, I spoke with the ticketing supervisor and she gave me a humanitarian waver for one of my bags. Unfortunately, South African Air wasn't so kind. They said I would have to pay for weight and extra bag fees, so I promptly opened my bag in front of the counter and started throwing out all the blue jeans, shoes and sandals I had gotten from Goodwill. They went ballistic and told me I couldn't do that and they said they would call security. I told them by all means call them, maybe they could use the clothes. I told them I was going to throw the clothes in the trash and they said I couldn't do that either. I did - they didn't call security. I did still have to pay and extra $118 for the second bag and over weight fees. After paying the fees, I went to the supervisor and told her that it was unfortunate that I was trying to do something nice for their people and she ruined it. She almost started crying after I explained what I was doing.

I should have arrived in Simon's Town about 11pm, but because of the later flight some wrong turns, I arrived about 3am. Sure glad I didn't book the first shark excursion for 6:45 that morning.

With that bit of a story, here are some photos from my first day at the Mariner's Guesthouse and Simon's Town South Africa.

Below, Select to see larger size, BACK to return to the blog.

What a wonderful surprise, the view from my room at the Mariner's Guesthouse in Simon's Town SA

A cup of java in a coffee press to start the morning.

Some street vendor's wares. Not much room for trinkets.

A close-up of their wire bead work.

Downtown Simon's Town.

"Nuisance" the naval dog during world war II.

Nice tribute to Nuisance.

His cap & collar

At the edge of town is a penguin sanctuary. This is less than a mile from the guesthouse.

I was told these were once called Jack Ass Penguins and they changed the name to Southern Penguins.

Little guy pruning himself.

Has dinner at the Polina restaurant in Kalb Bay. This photo was taken from my table.

Some wonderful seafood tapas for dinner - and a local Black Label beer of course.

Another nice shot from the restaurant.