Bye bye Lycra, hello Hermanus

 This morning we reluctantly left our base in Camps Bay, Cape Town to head off a couple of hours along the coast to the small harbour town of Hermanus. I say reluctantly, but to be honest, with the whole area heaving with thousands of Lycra-clad cyclists it’ll be nice to relax by the sea (and pool) for a few days after the hectic time in CapeTown. I would however recommend the city as a great place to visit. Modern, vibrant, culturally diverse, beautiful scenery and absolutely no problems with safety, despite one or two people (usually those who have never been) saying it’s unsafe. In reality it’s just like any other city, warts and all.

Dear, dear Johnny picked us up from our apartment and after a few diversions due to the cycle race we were heading East out of the city.

During the journey we found out that amongst Johnny’s other talents were that he was a coxwain of the Cape Town lifeboat service, so quite the hero. We also found out from some of his other comments that he’s a typical Afrikaan, so would probably enjoy reading The Daily Mail.😉

We arrived in Hermanus to cloudless skies, and the town doesn’t disappoint. In a superb position on top of the cliffs with great views of the ocean. Apparently it’s the whale-watching capital of South Aftrica, with whale pods visible from the cliff-tops at certain times of the year.

Lots of great bars and restaurants around the centre, including this one, where we had lunch, just opposite our hotel.

Just time to hit the pool for a couple of hours before heading out for the evening.

Like many other countries, South Africa has issues with electricity demand exceeding supply capacity, so they have introduced a ‘load shedding’ scheme. Basically, each local area has a period of time, usually once every 24 hours, but it varies by location, where electricity is not available for a period of time, usually around two hours, to enable the grid to cope with shortages of power. During these outages, certain things don’t work, such as traffic lights and street lights. The whole system generally works reasonably well, since the outages are scheduled and dates and times are available on a web site, but it tends not to affect the more affluent residents and businesses anyway, since they have generators and/or alternative power sources such as solar power. It does however affect the very poorest in the country (“the people with six kids but still have satellite dishes”, to quote Johnny) who lose all power for the duration. Also, the cynic in me notes that the more affluent areas tend to have load shedding in the middle of the night, whereas in the townships it’s more likely to occur during the daytime/early evening. There is no simple, short term solution to this, and perhaps we in the UK shouldn’t be too complacent either, since with our ever increasing demand for electricity coupled with our current limited supply capacity it’s something that might yet happen to us.

Looking forward to a day of R&R tomorrow, since the weather forecast is promising with temperatures hitting the high 70’s.