This year, Sarah and I went to South Africa! Sarah’s cousin was getting married close to Cape Town, and we decided to go to the wedding and also take a couple weeks of vacation to see some of the country. It was a great trip, and in this series of posts I’ll be sharing what we did, various stories (and glitches), and several photos. Let’s dive in!
Flights
As it turns out, South Africa is a long way away from Nova Scotia 😂
In order to get there, we flew from Halifax to Toronto, then to London, and then to Cape Town. This involved two overnight flights, which we were a bit apprehensive of. But it gets better…
While we were still in Halifax, we got a notification that our flight to London was delayed by 3 hours. Luckily our layover was long enough that we wouldn’t miss our connection, but it meant that instead of leaving Toronto around midnight, we had to wait until 3am. And in the end, it was closer to 4am before we finally got going. It sure felt like a long wait!
I managed to get a bit of sleep on the flight to London, but then didn’t sleep much on the flight to Cape Town. But otherwise, we arrived without much trouble!
Arrival and First Travel Glitches
We landed and got an Uber to take us to our Airbnb in Cape Town. Sarah was, of course, looking for birds along the way. Not only did we see several different species, but we even saw a flamingo! That was quite a novelty for us.
Once we got to the Airbnb, the lack of sleep caught up to me. I was toast. I went to have a “short” nap, which ended up not being so short. Eventually I dragged myself out of bed because we needed to get some groceries. There was a grocery store just down the road from us, so we went there, stocked up, came back, and had some lunch.
Then, the plan was to go to Green Point Park and the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, just for something to do on our “recovery” day. But when I tried to get an Uber, the app said that my payment method (i.e. my credit card) wasn’t working.
Wait, what?
I had just used Uber to get a ride from the airport, and I had used my card for groceries as well. Why wouldn’t it be working now?
We confirmed that it wasn’t just Uber that wasn’t working, and also that Sarah’s credit card (which is a second card on my account) also wasn’t working. This was pretty problematic, as we didn’t have a backup credit card.
(In other news, we’ve decided to bring a backup credit card on future trips)
Uber claimed to support Debit cards, but it didn’t work for me when I tried. I also tried to use PayPal, but that didn’t work either, possibly because of the same issue with the underlying credit card.
I managed to call the credit card company, and it turns out that despite the fact that I had set a travel advisory on my account, they blocked my credit card anyway 😩
They said that they should be able to get it unblocked, but it would take between 3 hours and 3 days! We felt pretty stuck without it. Luckily my family back home was able to help me to get an alternative card set up on my Uber account, so at least we could get around a bit.
So off to Green Point Park we went!
Green Point Park and V&A Waterfront
After enjoying a beautiful afternoon out at Green Point Park, we went over to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront area, which is quite touristy, for supper. We went to a seafood place right on the water, and enjoyed our meals.
Since our credit cards weren’t working, we were hoping that one of our debit cards would work to pay for the meal.
They didn’t.
So we moved to plan B: go find an ATM and withdraw the money that was needed for the meal. Easy, right?
Well, the first ATM I found on Google Maps appeared to be inside a building that was a construction zone. So I popped into a store and asked someone where the nearest ATM’s are. He gave me directions over to the OTHER mall and where to find the ATM’s. Once I finally found them, the first one didn’t work! I got all the way through to the end of the process and it said that it couldn’t withdraw from my card, or something.
But the next one worked, thankfully 😅
When we got back to the Airbnb, I managed to get back on the phone with the credit card company and got the card re-enabled. My tap didn’t work for the rest of the trip, but otherwise it was fine. Turns out this wasn’t to be the last glitch of the trip…but that’s for another post 😉