Dinner on the waterfront. - Cape Town, South Africa

The day before yesterday was a slow one. We didn't do much because we still had more shopping to do. We went to the Blue Route mall, very close to here. It's huge, think Southdale. We bought a road atlas and road map (you should never rely on the GPS alone, especially here where you might need to take an alternative route than the one the GPS keeps insisting you go on, or runs out of battery without warning!), a new pair of jeans for me (I've lost a pound or two!), and most importantly we activated the cell-phone that our host had left for us and bought liquor. Two nice bottles of a South African red wine, a bottle of gin, and a large bottle of tonic and all for less than $20 USD! 

We had dinner on the Victoria and Alfred (V&A) Waterfront, unarguably the most touristy and safe area of Cape Town.

Yep, that's a ferris wheel.

We ate at a restaurant featuring South African cuisine. The starter was good (fish cakes) and the dessert was good, a brandy pudding with a creamy brandy sauce and ice cream (a word about "pudding" it's not the same here or in England, it's not the custard like stuff we eat back home. It's more of a rich, crumbly cake, really good). However, the main course was only okay, I had ostrich and beef kebab and Don had the local fish, snoek, which had so many bones in it that it was a real test of skill to try to eat it without getting a mouthful of them. My kebab was overdone but still tasty. The side dish was not what we thought it would be, it was "puthu and chakalaka". Puthu, or putu, is a ground maize "somewhat like cous cous" and chakalaka is a "tomato, onion and vegetable relish". The putu was really hard and tasteless and nothing like cous cous and the chakalaka was pretty much like canned pork and beans except without the pork. 

We had planned on maybe going to hear some jazz but we hadn't really found anything we thought we would like so we drove back home, in the dark, without incident as we knew to take the M4 instead of the M5 and we had programmed the GPS to take us via a way that totally missed Military Road. 

Yesterday we made a lovely drive to Hermanus to look at whales. We ended up just having lunch  and booking our whale watching boat tour for today. The scenery along the route is spectacular and I'll post pictures later. There are calla lilies blooming everywhere along Muizenburg Beach, farmland and forests that looks as if you're in Wisconsin or northern California, a huge 4km drive up a mountain (such views!) and more to come.