taking it easy around cape town.

So, the first full day of freedom dawns over Cape Town. Seeing as I only found out on friday that I didn't have to work on the weekend, me and Marcin 9the other CAPE guy on-site, over from Poland) didn't have anything organized so it was a case of schlep around town looking for stuff to do. I was hoping to get up to the top of Table Mountain, but it was covered in cloud so that was no good for us (once you get to the top, it'd be nice to be able to see stuff.....) So, we went to the Aquarium instead, which was sort of nice but generally when you've seen one aquarium you've seen them all. After that we went to the tourist office to see about doing some tours. We were thinking about something like the Cape of Good Hope or the Wine Tour for sunday, but we managed to find a tour that combined the two! After booking this, we again were at a bit of an impasse for something to do, so we headed out to Camps Bay for a while, Cape Town's main beach area.

All I can say is I never really thought before that I would be standing on a beach sweating on the 1st december! the beach was packed full of people - it's just the start of the summer holidays over here - but no-one was actually in the water. I went down to see what it was like, and discovered the reason: the water was quite chilly (about 13 degrees I think someone said). I suppose that's what you get when the nearest land mass to you is the Arctic! So we took a wander along the beach, taking in the sights. And some of the sights were quite interesting indeed. Not as many as I would have thought, but there were some very nice things wandering around in bikinis (or even half-bikinis in a few cases). It was hot enough that I was tempted to take off my t-shirt myself, but seeing as everyone around me was all nice and tanned (and in a lot of cases a bit more than just tanned) and I haven't seen any amount of sun since probably last august 12 months, I decided against it. Remember the scene in Jaws where al the people were rushing off the beach screaming trying to get away from the Great White Shark? Well, in this case it would be trying to get away from the Great White Irishman! So, for the sake of other people, I stayed clothed.

After a while of wandering around, we felt a tad peckish so headed up to grab some grub. All of the bars, restaurants etc are on the opposte side of the road to the beach, so was easy enough to find some place. Naturally being so close to the ocean, the restaurant menus tended to trend towards the fishy variety, but we managed to find a place that did steaks so we sat out on the balcony eating, sipping beers and people watching for a few hours. the great thing about people watching is that you get to see all shapes and sizes, in this case including a couple of muppets in a BMW with no front bumper and a big dent in the passenger side door who obviously believed that they hadn't wrecked their car half enough and disappeared off into the distance with a screech of tires and a big enough trail of rubber that you'd think they were in a DeLorean and trying to get up to 85mph to go back to when their hairstyles were in fashion.

After that the evening was drawing in a bit so we headed to this bar/restaurant that the guys in work had mentioned called 'Le Caprice', and settled in there for the duration. Again, more people of all shapes and sizes were around, including a few we'd seen on the beach with (slightly) more clothes on, so the people watching was resumed. The vibe was a bit different to pubs at home, but there was a bit of craic nonetheless, so drinks were had and people were chatted to, and more drinks were had and finally an unexpected hitch was discovered: Unlike my normal tipple at home, Bulmers, where you know by the taste that you're drinking alcohol, Savannah Dry cider pretty much goes down like lemonade but is 6%. So, as sat night rolled slowly into sun morning, we were getting more and more "tired and emotional" Eamonn Dunphy style so seeing as we were leaving for the Cape at 8:30am, we decided to call it a night. Not a bad introduction to Cape Town weekend life!