Day 372 / 137

Date: 19 April 2023
Sleeping location: Smart Stay apartment, Somerset West, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 108 / 23444 / 8499
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 800 / 223800 / 105800
Most formal/comical bird: African Penguin
Day in three words: The glorious coastline

We both slept well for possibly the first time since dad arrived out here, and in the morning fastidiously tidied up Tip's, so fastidiously that I managed to leave my jumper there. First thing of note I’d lost or left in over a year on the road, which I think is pretty good. Breakfast was a load of random things including leftover curry, but cooked by me so obviously 10/10. Hermanus at morning rush hour was big and busy and not particularly fun to escape, and even once we’d left its orbit the road was still noisy and busy for a good hour. It was a shame as the scenery was good to excellent, first farmland and green hills, then many rows of vines with the beautiful bay and mountains behind. 

 

Once we turned off the main road things got a lot quieter and nicer. Now we were in sandy pine forest, some of it in regrowth after a fire, with big jaggy rock faces to our right and the distant sea to the left. In Kleinmond we stopped for a nice coffee and cake then pushed on towards Betty’s Bay, which was VERY fancy although less of a town and more of a collection of fancy houses. Many of these massive fancy houses appeared to be in imminent danger of massive boulders falling down from the massive cliff above, which would presumably be massively inconvenient for the owners. 

 

But the actual attraction of Betty’s Bay came from its - and this may be a surprise - penguins. It’s home to one of only three African Penguin colonies on the mainland. A sign at the entrance informed us that "African Penguins charm us with their formal attire and comical waddle" and it was not wrong. They are one of the most engaging animals I can think of, so graceful and swift in the water and so useless and funny out of it. Here they were hanging out both on land and in the sea. A load of fibreglass structures had been installed for them to use as nests, but some of them were still making them the old fashioned way from sand under bushes. I wondered if this was a sort of class war, with the old fashioned “shabby chic” nesters looking down on the new builds. One penguin was instead nesting inside a drainage pipe, which was perhaps the penguin equivalent of the homeless people under the bridge. 

When collecting our bikes to set off again I got into a conversation with some people at a restaurant about my journey. One of them asked how I felt about being less than two days away from the end and I didn't really know. I feel every emotion. I have no idea how I will react when I finish. What if I don’t react at all? What if all the emotions cancel each other out? What if I burst into flame as a result of too much emotion?

We carried on a bit further to Pringle Bay, which was more of an actual town and slightly less opulent than Betty’s, and had a nice lunch involving another good sandwich. Unfortunately here I got myself into another lather worrying about the potential for crime when we entered the wider Cape Town area towards the end of the day, a lather which didn’t really abate for the rest of the day. Coming out of Pringle Bay we got our first sight of Table Mountain and the Cape Peninsula, looming out of the mist across the bay. The first sight of the end. Here I opted to take a gravel road detour, which dad couldn’t take as his tyres were too skinny, because it looked like it might be very scenic. And the views were indeed stunning, with the distant Cape peaks across the shimmering blue water on the left and high cliffs on my right. Unfortunately I could barely look at them because the road was a total nightmare, all loose sand and loose rocks, and it took all my concentration to continue cycling without losing the back wheel. 

After reconvening with dad above the beautiful Rooi-Els beach we set off onto 20km of absolutely amazing road. The mountains plunged 100s of metres into False Bay with views of Cape Peninsula and distant seals or other aquatic mammals in the blue water below. The road was notched into the side of the steep slopes so we again had mountains on the right, sea on the left and beaches in between the two. The views both forward and backwards were absolutely amazing and even though we were a bit pushed for time we had to keep stopping for pictures. Annoyingly I wasn’t able to fully enjoy it as I was too worked up about the possibility of being murdered or robbed once we arrived in the big city.

Reassuringly, on the way in to town we saw a couple of other cyclists out on evening rides. Our route was also pretty well compiled, first through a posh district, then a big wide dual carriageway where any murderers could be spotted and evaded well in advance, then the beachfront promenade. We were on alert but no murderers revealed themselves and many non-murderers were out and about, which was reassuring*. The coastline remained pretty even when built up and the sun setting over the water was rather nice. Was it possible that Cape Town could be…pleasant? The rush hour traffic tried its best to say no, with lots of cars all of a sudden and some extremely unhelpful drivers. 

The apartment was quite far away from anywhere to eat so we got some pizza delivered, and also attempted to get beers delivered but for some reason they cancelled so we cracked into the nice port instead. We will need something else to celebrate with in a day and a bit, subject to not being murdered. 

*Unless they were ALL murderers and it was some kind of plain-clothes murderer convention, but that seems unlikely