Day one: Planes, trains and automobiles....
- marymoscrop1
- Oct 16, 2025
- 6 min read
Thanks for checking out my blog – the first one is always a little boring – it is the day we travel, but there is the expectation of so much excitement ex……
This is a bit of a break with tradition – my normal blogs are ‘Moscrop Girls on Tour’ Mum and Daughter travelling the world together, but as Emily is living her best life in the Antipodes, she is having her own adventures. On this trip I am with my lovely friend Emma Jane – also sometimes shortened to Em, so I wonder how often I will refer to her as Emily….? Forgive me, I am getting old!
Big birthdays deserve big adventures, and as I just turned 65, this one will be a doozy…
To set the scene for this trip – we begin with 5 nights in Cape Town followed by a drive along the famous Garden Route, resting our weary heads on the way at Franschhoek, Hermanus, Knysna and ending with a 5 night safari in the Addo Elephant National Park at Port Elizabeth.
Things I am particularly looking forward to - it will be interesting to look back at this list at the end of the trip and see what the highlights were:
Table Mountain - it is just one of those iconic places that I have always wanted to see
Robben Island
Cage Shark Diving (part 1 of 'big birthdays deserve big celebrations')
A Wine Tram - who knew such a thing existed.... (part 2 of 'big birthdays deserve big celebrations')
SAFARII!!!!!! (Part 3 of 'big birthdays deserve big celebrations') - and to be fair, the reason for our trip"
There will be lots of photos, and lots of stories - Emma is even of the TikTok generation, so there may be opportunity for videos...
I have avoided Manchester Airport for ages – I felt it had got a little too big for its boots – queues were always long and quite stressful, but it has been a breeze! From the jam free journey down, so the meet and greet parking, then check in and security, not a hassle to be had. I have taken Manchester off my ‘no fly’ list 😊
Fast forward two 9 hour flights (absolutely bloody freezing – no need at all to have the temperature that low!) …. we arrive in Cape Town.
Got to give a shout out to Doha airport though – absolutely bloody HUGE! Two train lines to get you from gate to gate and if there was not every kind of shop, I will eat my hat.
Back to Cape Town - we got pulled in at customs, who were very confused by boiled sweets – they asked if we had any food in our bags, and Emma said ‘just boiled sweets and books’ he repeated it very slowly while he worked out what we were saying…… could have been tricky.
Getting the car hire was simple enough, driving off in it was a little more tricky. Trying to get my phone (complete with South African ESim so no worries about network coverage) to connect with my car…. was never going to happen - also my google maps went in to a huff and stopped talking to me, so Emma had to be the voice of the sat nav and the same time as pointing out the local sights….it was a challenge to say the least!
General driving news, they drive on the same side of the road as the UK (😊) but apparently you don’t stop for pedestrians – even if they are on a zebra crossing! I stopped to let people cross and all of the cars were beeping at me - then a man jumped out of the bushes and told me to drive on - he did have a traffic marshal uniform on - goodness knows what he was doing in the bushes though..
Found our hotel (very central, that you Matt Morgan from Travel Counsellors, who planned our whole trip – highly recommend him!). Waiting to turn right into the car park as the security guard chatted animatedly to the driver in front – sadly we were on a main thoroughfare and the cars behind us were not happy that we stopped – picture lots of bleeping horns and one car had to reverse back down the steep hill to take a run up at it to get passed us – so much smoke coming from his car!
What3words rewriting.preface.blitz; for those of you who have not ready my blogs before, I use What3words to record where we have been (every 3ft square plot of land in the world has been mapped out and allocated 3 words and if you type those three words into their app you can have a street view of where we have been).
Our room was not ready so we adjourned to the bar to wait – in the knowledge that the reception staff would come and tell us when it was ready…. We wanted to sit outside, even though it was quite breezy, we had been stuck in transport mode for almost 36 hours - so the maître d’ opened the doors and said someone would be out to take out order…oh no they wouldn't! The wind got up so much that no-one could open the doors and we were locked out of the hotel!
We were freezing our brass monkeys off and there was no way for us to get back inside (who knew South Africa was COLD!) Eventually there was a lull in the gale force 9 and someone managed to open the doors for us – nothing for it but to adjourn to the inside bar and wait for our room – spoiler, they forgot about us… the bar was open though!
The area we are in is lovely – really reminds me of Vancouver – same vibe, same architecture, lots of art galleries and lots and lots of yachts.
There are some really cool ‘frames’ that you can use to have your pics taken in – we met a lovely couple from Lancashire who offered to take out pics…. Not sure they knew the point was to get the mountain in the frame, but still, thanks for trying!
Table Mountain is literally behind out hotel – and the clouds were falling off the side of the mountain – I wish I was more poetic so I could do it justice….
We wandered around the harbour and a couple of art galleries, both excellent, and we watched some young South African Dancers in the street – they were excellent! Even though it is cold, they definitely brought the heat.
We ended up in a massive market – circa 500 shops, all locally made stuff, really colourful. I stopped to look at windchimes and was instantly approached by the sales lady who went into full sales mode, until I told her I stopped because I already had one (I don’t) and she went into Sherlock mode asking me about the construction and look and feel of it…. All of the while EJ was thinking she had never seen one in my garden (that’s because it does not exist!) and from there we went to ‘Time out Market’ which is a collection of bars &restaurants and there was a Jazz band playing – what a good vibe, lots of people enjoying themselves.
I opted for Wings – sadly for my Canadian fiends, honey garlic was not an option, but they were delicious all the same
– Emma had 4 cheese pizza and we watched it being baked in the oven. Cocktails we sampled were: Blushing Cooler and One More Time for me and In The Jungle and Blossom for Emma…..
all of which were quite strong, so we braved the gale force winds and came back to our hotel for a shower and early night before a big day tomorrow – we will be checking at least 6 things off our to do list…
Final pic of the mountain by night to finish off for today
We have planned out our whole day tomorrow, and that day has to start at 7.30 am, so, lights out :)
Wow!! What an amazing start go your adventure! 😍