We arrived on Dec 11, 2017 from the US a bit delayed due to snow in both Boston and London!! In Johannesburg we rented a van for the 6 of us and headed off to see our neice Charlotte's Peace Corps family, village, and school. We spent an afternoon there and then drove to Kimberley (think diamonds) where we spent a night in order to catch a morning flight to Cape Town.
In Cape Town, we did the usual sites - Table Mountain, city walk abouts, a day of touring boutique wine farms and estates, a "football" match at the really cool stadium on Friday night, a drive south to see penguins and an attempt to take a tour/ferry to Robbens Island where Mandela was incarcerated for so long.
Cape Town is busy, very cosmopolitan, and expensive. It is very much like San Francisco with the up and down of hills in the city. Unfortunately they are also in a 3 year drought situation that should have been better anticipated for. As a result sometime in the early spring of 2018 there's a very strong liklihood that the taps will be turned off and there will be no more water in the reservoirs to draw from. The next option will likely be to buy drinking water, build personal cisterns and by non potable water via trucks at great expense for washing. As of January 2018 the daily limit is being dropped and residents are advised to take no more than 2 showers a week, oily hair and dirty cars should be considered status symbols!!! I don't know how they expect the tourism industry to adapt.
