New Year's Day Chaos

We had taken Alex's picture at the top of Table Mountain on the afternoon of New Year's Eve which is what you have to do when you come to Cape Town for the first time. So on New Year's Day, after we volunteered with the penguins, we rolled on down the coast to see the other thing you have to see when you are on the Cape Peninsula. The Cape of Good Hope.

Unfortunately to get to the Cape of Good Hope from Table View where SANCCOB is located, one has to drive along the coast. Either the Atlantic coast past Green Point, Camps Bay, through Hout Bay, Noordhoek and Scarborough or down the False Bay coast through Muizenberg, Fish Hoek and Simon's Town. Since we also wanted to visit the penguin colony at Boulders Beach in Simon's Town, we opted for the False Bay route. The minute we hit Muizenberg, we figured we had chosen poorly. The roads are crowded through this popular beach town even when it is not a public holiday and a beautiful hot day like it was on New Year's Day. That afternoon, it was "chaos". If you don't believe me, read the paper.



This was the headline on the front page of the holiday issue of The Cape Argus. And that is a picture of Muizenberg Beach. Looks like Coney Island on the 4th of July!







But then we read on.

This picture of Camps Bay accompanied the story on Beach Frenzy! So Door number one was no better than Door number two. Door number three is by boat.

We did make it down to Good Hope eventually. Once you got past the bottleneck beaches, everything cleared up. And we did get the other requisite picture of Alex standing in front of the sign marking the most south-western point on the African continent.

I am very happy we missed one traffic jam though.

Inside the newspaper, The Big Story was Crowds come out to party.

The article went on to describe the traffic congestion in Cape Town's CBD during New Year's Eve after 200,000 revelers descended on the city. An estimated 80,000 people partied on The Grand Parade and another 40,000 lined the streets along the parade route to cheer on the Cape Minstrels! It was not that bad when we were there throughout most of the evening. Capetonians apparently arrive very fashionably late.

According to the article, traffic in and out of Cape Town during the peak times before and after midnight was a complete gridlock.

We saw it too. As we were leaving Cape Town at about 11:00 pm, the highway coming in was basically a parking lot.







Yes it would have been nice to see the fireworks this close over the back drop of  the V&A Waterfront, but I liked our view of the fireworks from our private penthouse terrace in Gordon's Bay just as much!

And I really liked the fact that we could just turn out the lights when the fireworks were done and go right to sleep lulled by the calming sounds of the surf right outside our windows.