Cape Town (Part 1) - Departure

The journey

We (Me and Solih) went to OR Tambo airport on Saturday evening. Dino and Dita were so kind driven us to the airport... (Thanks yaa). Before we went there, we stop by at Bruma market coz Dita need to bought some vegetables and rice. It may called a china town area here, bcoz mostly people who come and live in this area are chinese. Anyway, our flight scheduled on 19.00 and we did self check in using the check in machine which was very helpful coz no que to do it.

We got the boarding pass printed and went to D5 gate as written on it. But somehow, it was not correct, as Solih noticed in the tv screen. It was moved to D1 gate. Luckily it was not too far from original gate.

The flight took 2 hours and we arrived at Cape Town International Airport on around 21.10. It was rain but the Mango's pilot was really cool. He landed the plane very smoothly.... two tumbs up! As planned before, we then went to Tempest Car rental on the left wing of the Domestic Arrival Gate to take our car as we booked earlier. There are a lot of rental cars here. So, don't worry you run out a car. After signing some forms we got our car. It's KIA Picanto - manual transmission.

Lesson learn for rental the car here, don't tell if there will be additional driver, coz it will cost you more money. Ensure that the car is in good condition. Recognize all scretches or damages properly. Check all lamps, brake, all features work properly. You need to check thoroughly so it won't give you any trouble when you return the car back.

Okay, enough with the car things. I did driving bcoz the car is manual as Solih used to drive matic. We use Tomtom GPS as our guide. And you know what... I was realised that it help us a lot. I can't imagine if we not bring Tomtom with us. So, another tips for you is... bring your own GPS. But in case you forget not bring your GPS, car rental can give you GPS for more additional cost off course.

We arrived at Vivant Student Hostel around 22.00. It was saturday night, so the streets around the neighbourhood was quite crowdy. We saw a lot of security officer and police cars did patrol activity frequently. No parking lot, so we need to park our car on the street. Fortunately, we found a good spot near the security pos... ^^.

The wind was chilly and the hostel's office was closed. Darn!!! I did early booked and tell the owner that we will come late in the evening to the hostel. But the office was closed... I tried to call the hostel owner's cell phone and ended in voice mailbox. Luckily, we asked the security officer how to contact the owner. He said there is a phone number to call in case of emergency as sticked on the office window... and we did not notice that hehehe... Finally, I can reach the owner's cell phone by dialing the emergency number. Neil is the name of the owner or perhaps not the owner, but the officer that responsible for our room booking.

The hostel is more like "kost-kost an" in Jakarta. We booked this hostel bcoz it's cheap and not too far from the city center. The building is old fashion. The floor made of woods and it make some noise when you etp on it. The room is on 2nd floor above the office. It's not too bad actually. We stay in the same room in an english guy named Tom. He was already been here. There also 4 more guest from French that stay in the hostel. And we went to bed after some chit chat.

Well, I wrote too much already..

next time I'll tell you how we start our journey in cape town :)