South Africa 1 - tourist trap...

I know posts are getting a little sporadic but Internet out here is hard to come by as many a climbing blog is suffering right now. We arrived Tuesday into Cape Town. Flight was 2 hours delayed, we'd had minimal sleep and then we had to go and get the car as with the mats and stuff our luggage was huge.

To keep costs down I had heard of a place that hired out old VW Beetles (think Herbie but older) for dirt cheap. Some guy came to collect us and take us to the Beetle place. Obviously since this wasn't Hertz these guys operated out of a less savoury part of town. Although we'd heard all about the problems in S Africa of course it still doesn't prepare you for seeing these townships (slums) up front and personal to be honest. They sort of look like allotments in the UK but with more people, rubbish and they are seriously vast. Anyway safe to say the journey to the Beetle place through these areas was a bit white knuckle with us praying the driver didn't hit a red light and have to stop. Ive been here almost a week now and driving around have seen quite a few of these townships but so far the shock factor has not diminished. Anyway you get the picture.

We got the Beetle, its a total rust bucket, but so far it seems to move so that's the main thing. After that we headed out in Cape Town (cheap beers), had a look at a penguin colony, went on a two day safari and spotted some migrating whales off the coast in a place called Hermanus. So Ive been doing the tourist thing but I know what your asking I came here to climb, potentially the worlds best bouldering is 2 hours down the road (4 in the Beetle) so what the hell am I playing at?

Well suffice to say I'm super psyched to get up to Rockland's now. Ive been dreaming of boulders at night and woke up to some serious palm sweats last night. However I'm only here in S Africa once most likely and the missus is keen for this staring at animals eating for hours on end so I figured I could be patient for a bit. To be fair I also got a finger tweak from my last session at the Tor before leaving so I thought a weeks rest would not be a bad thing. Still my patience is close to wearing out now and even taking down a load of red wine every evening doesn't seem to be helping anymore; we leave for the boulders tomorrow and I'm praying the Beetle holds it together. The weather is threatening some rain but its super cool, much colder than I thought for Africa so conditions could be pretty darn primo. I even saw snow on some of the mountain tops coming back from the safari yesterday.

So next post I'm hoping will be a little more climbing focused with maybe a photo or two..until then over and out...