Hi. I thought it would be nice to catch up people who don't see my Facebook photos on my trip to South Africa. Our trip was from Capetown to Port Elizabeth along the Garden Route, and some game drives to the east of Port Elizabeth. We skipped Johannesburg, since I am not much into cities. We skipped Kruger National Park; it is a much larger safari park, but since we had plenty to do on the two days that I allotted to game drives, and Kruger was 1500 km north of Port Elizabeth - and Kruger has malaria which the southern part of South Africa does not, there did not seem to be any point.
What is the difference between a game drive and a safari? About $2000. For $20,000 a day, you can fly around in a helicopter and sleep in luxurious tents and eat luxurious food (which we can't eat anyway, unless we chose one of the few kosher safaris that operate in Kruger). For $2,000 a day, you get a few game drives and sleep on the preserve with the aforementioned luxurious food. For $200, you can join one of the game drives and see the animals, and get one luxury meal. For $20, in very select locations, you can simply hire someone to join you in your car and drive around yourself. I chose 1 day of the $200 variety and one day of the $20 variety.
South Africa is very inexpensive: food, lodging, many goods, many experiences. Even the speeding tickets were inexpensive. The items that were at normal price were international brands, such as our car rental and items such as imported sneakers.
My companion and I left Israel for South Africa on Wed evening, Feb 6, 2019. This was out first experience in flying south, rather than west, which meant that we did not fly through any time zones. Which was weird.
We flew to Cape Town, where we stayed until Monday morning. The synagogue that we had intended to visit had burned down a few months before we arrived, but they held services elsewhere. it is easy to get kosher food in Cape Town, especially at Seapoint. It is easy to get kosher food all over South Africa, but specialty baked goods and meat are exclusive to Cape Town , Jo'burg, and one or two other major cities.
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| The closed synagogue |
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| Downtown Seapoint |
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| Me coming back from toveling dishes in the ocean |
A visit to Cape Town must include a trip up Table Mountain, preferably on a day where the city is not covered in fog.
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| View from cable car going up to Table Mountain |
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| Cable car reaching the top of Table Mountain |
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| View of fog from Table Mountain |
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| Walking around Table Mountain |
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| View of Cape Town from just below the fog |
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| Dassies are rock hyraxes |
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| Flora on Table Mountain |
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| These are available in all tourist shops and in most supermarkets |
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| My kosher meat pie. Meat pies are ubiquitous in South Africa. That green drink is supposed to be vanilla, but it looks and tastes like nuclear waste. |
Cape Town, like every other town in
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| Driving south from Cape Town along the cape |
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| Petting a seal, for which they charge you (they don't tell you that until after you pet it) |
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| There are penguins on the cape |
Driving east from Cape Town we
