South Africa Trip - Part Two

Cape Point

Thor and Torsten with the penguins
Boulders Beach

Cape Point National Park

Muizenburg Beach

We had a nice lunch here overlooking the ocean

We stayed here at Boulders Beach Lodge

Cape Point National Park

We spent the second half of our trip at the Capetown peninsula on the southern tip of South Africa. It is a beautiful place with lots of gorgeous beaches and mountains. We stayed at Boulders Beach, on the Indian Ocean, which is home to a penguin colony. We could actually swim with the penguins there. They had a great restaurant with an outdoor deck overlooking the ocean, where we ate breakfast and dinner every day.

We visited a number of interesting places. The Cape Point National Park is where the Cape of Good Hope is, at the southernmost tip of the peninsula. There were beautiful views of the mountains and ocean there. We also took a cable car up to the top of Table Mountain which had great views overlooking the city of Capetown. We also were able to take a helicopter tour of the peninsula which gave a nice perspective of it. One day, Thor and Torsten took a motorcycle tour of the area in a motorcycle with a sidecar. They had a driver who took them out for a half day tour. While they did that, Torrie and I went to the waterfront in Capetown and took a boat tour of the harbor there. We saw lots of seals, which Torrie enjoyed.

We also had fun doing some shopping at stores like Toys R Us, which we don't have in Kenya. We ate at McDonald's several times too, since that is something we haven't had since leaving the U.S.

Everything went great until the last day of the trip when we were returning home. We were preparing to drive to the airport to catch our early morning flight home, when we couldn't find the keys to our rental car anywhere. We looked and looked, to no avail. We called Avis, who said they didn't have an extra key. Fortunately, one of the windows in the car was cracked open enough that we were able to unlock our car to get our stuff out of it. However, that set off the car alarm, which we couldn't turn off without the key. We ended up taking the hotel's shuttle to the airport, since we couldn't drive our car. Because of the time spent looking for the key, we arrived at the airport about 45 minutes before the flight. The person checking us in was extremely slow and we were still in the check in line about 15 minutes before the flight was to leave. We began hearing overhead pages for "Hedges party please report to gate 8 for immediate boarding", and we were still in the check in area. That, of course, made me nervous that we were going to miss our plane. We were the last people to board the plane, but we did make the flight.

After getting onto the plane for our connecting flight from Johannesburg to Nairobi, they informed us that due to a technical problem with the airplane, we couldn't fly on it, and they would have to locate another aircraft. So we sat on the ground in the plane for more than an hour before they were able to move us to another plane. Having to sit on a plane with 2 toddlers for an extra hour prior to a four hour flight, wasn't exactly our idea of fun. However, the kids did pretty well, considering that it was a very long day for them. We finally arrived in Nairobi, about 2 hours behind schedule. By the time we went through passport control and got our luggage, it was around 6 pm. I figured that would work out just right so that we would get home around 7 pm when it gets dark. However, the traffic was unusually heavy in Nairobi, and we didn't even leave the city until 7 pm due to traffic jams. So, we did the whole drive back home in the dark, which was rather scary. I was so glad we had a Kenyan driver who knew the roads well. We typically don't go anywhere at night that requires driving.

Once we arrived home, we picked up our house key from our mailbox here. However, somewhere between the mailbox and our house, the key got lost. We looked all over for it by flashlight, but couldn't see it. So, we had 2 exhausted kids and all our luggage on our front porch, and couldn't get inside. We finally went to our neighbors home to use his phone to call for some help, when he suggested that often the keys around here will work in multiple locks. So he gave us his keyring, and we began trying all the keys in our lock. Amazingly, one of his keys opened the door for us. We were very glad to be inside our home again. That day was one of the most stressful I can remember having in quite a while. However, despite the stress, we could tell that God was looking out for us in the midst of it all. The next day we found our house key in our driveway. The hotel found our rental car key later the same day and returned our car for us. So, everything worked out in the end.