Brian and I decided to spend our Christmas holiday in South
Africa. We spent the first 3 days in the Winelands, staying in Franschhoek, and
the last 3 days touring around Cape Town. The flight to Cape Town is about 9
hours all told, but seemed like much less as this trip we got tickets in
business class!! WOW! What a difference a flat bed makes … and of course the
complimentary champagne and wonderful food helps too. :) I could write an entire post
about how wonderful it was to fly business, but I won’t bore you. Suffice to
say that if you ever get the chance, take it.
We had a wonderful flight and arrived at the Cape Town
airport about 8am Christmas morning. It was weird to travel on Christmas eve,
but we decided that if we couldn’t be with family, travel was the next best
option. We got our luggage without any trouble and headed to the car rental area.
The good news is that Thrifty did have an office at the airport (see my post
from Jordan about Budget), the bad news is they were either very busy or
extremely unorganized as we had to wait quite a while for our car.
Our car. We (maybe I should say I as I tend to do most of
the bookings) have an aversion to car rental fees, and as such always choose
one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) cars on offer. Our rentals are always
tiny, lucky to have power locks, and often have a manual transmission. And this
usually isn’t a big deal – Brian always drives … hmmm, maybe he should have a
say in the car choice? Our challenge here in South Africa is that they drive on
the other side of the road, which means the driver sits on the right, and with
a manual transmission this means the driver (my hero, Brian) has to manage the
gear shift with his left hand. It also means the signal indicator is on the
right, which means for the first few turns, Brian turned on the wipers instead
of the signal indicator, which I thought was pretty funny. We (aka Brian) have
decided to upgrade our car rental choices in the future. ;) The other
interesting thing about our car is the noises it makes. When we open the car
doors to get out of the vehicle, there is this annoying loud beep that alerts
everyone in the surrounding area that we have arrived. When we get into the
car, we have to put the key in the ignition and LOCK all the doors or the car
alarm will start to sound. I won’t even tell you how long that took us to
figure out! J
We’re thinking it must be because of the crime rate in SA and the potential for
car hijacking. We’ve seen a lot of ‘Clubs’ on steering wheels since arriving
and were warned before coming not to leave ANYTHING in the car, not even in the
trunk.
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