Cape Town: Weathering two interesting pilots

Cape Town must be done

As my weekends rolled by towards the penultimate one in South Africa, I realised I needed to visit Cape Town to do the main and essential things and yet there would never really be enough time to do Cape Town justice.

The last time I was in Cape Town, I could only do the short bus tour before I was whisked away to a colleague’s home where we had a typical South African barbeque called a braai.

After struggling a bit to arrange travel online, I decided to visit a travel agent and this proved really valuable in the information I got and the appreciation of what I could get done in two days of a weekend. I planned on going up the cable car to the top of Table Mountain and also visiting Robben Island.

The travel agent then booked the flights, accommodation and airport transfers, the tours were best booked in Cape Town as I was advised because the weather could be unpredictable.

First pilot acquaintance

In the airport lounge, a mother with two boisterous boys was busy on her mobile phone as I took a seat not far from them when I realised it was a family with the father being a pilot with South African Airways brandishing a 3-stripe epaulette.

They were conversing in Afrikaans, most of which I understood using my Dutch knowledge, I was struggled to get the gripe off my glasses when got up and presented me with proper lens cleaners. I thanked him in Dutch and also said I could understand Afrikaans too.

He first thought I was Dutch, at least, the subtle differences in language help determine whether one is speaking Dutch or Afrikaans, the expression of gratitude can be a Shibboleth.

A conversation ensued as I told them I was visiting Cape Town for the weekend and they were on their way home to Cape Town from Hong Kong. The most important bit of information I got was about the weather, he checked the forecast and though it was cloudy in Cape Town on Friday morning, he surmised from the wind and humidity factors that it would be a clear day to go up Table Mountain.

I quickly realised too that pilots probably knew just as much about the weather as meteorologists, because that determines how they fly, just as must as the weather is important to sailors and mariners too.

Second pilot acquaintance

On the flight, I had the window seat sat beside a lady who seems to concentrate on her music and iPad for most of the journey. The Airbus A340 wide-bodied airliner was a revelation, ample leg room, almost fully reclining seats you could step out onto the aisle without disturbing your co-passenger. The aisle itself was wide enough for people to pass without having to sidle through if another passenger were put their hand luggage in the overhead cabins.

I noticed that she was not only recognised by the crew but literally every one of them came round to say hello, including other crew that were travelling as passengers. At one brief moment when she did not seem to be doing anything, I decided to start a conversation by asking if she lived in Cape Town.

She did, and in the process I learnt that she was returning from a holiday in America and as the conversation developed, another crew member came round to say hello and then asked when she was getting her fourth stripe. And though both cabin and flight crew can get stripes, I decided to play safe and ask instead if she also worked for South African Airways and it transpired she was a long-haul flight pilot with three-stripe epaulettes and one of the two female pilots that fly such distances.

A much interesting person

She sometimes flies the aircraft we were on, which is sometimes co-opted onto the busy Johannesburg to Cape Town route. By a strange coincidence, the captain of the flight we were on was the other long-haul flight South African Airways female pilot.

We got to talking about how she loved flying and that she had always wanted to fly from the age of 10, the only downside to the job was fatigue management, from crossing an average of 6 time zones overnight that there were days it was difficult to say what day of the week they were in.

As we approached, Cape Town, she hinted that the hotel I was staying at served an amazing menu of milkshakes and looking out, she also predicted that the clouds will lift enough to not only be able to summit the Table Mountain but that the views will be stunning too, that afternoon. Pilots know best when it comes to the weather.

Our conversation about many other things continued until we parted ways at baggage reclaim, and so, I was set for Cape Town, picked up by the pre-arranged shuttle service.

Thought Picnic: Being merry on the ferry

Decisions

I finally decided I will travel to Amsterdam late yesterday afternoon rather than postpone once again the appointment I should have had with my medical consultant last month.

In December, one is met with all sorts of choices and the variables are cost, weather and ease of travel. Now, I have at various times used all the forms of travel available between London and Amsterdam by air, by coach, by train and by sea.

The queen’s itinerary

The last time I did the sea crossing was in the summer of 99 when I embarked on a tour of Europe with what was sold as the Imperial Tour and it was London - Budapest - London to be completed within 2 months stopping anywhere along the way for as long as I wanted within that time frame.

I did Amsterdam, Hannover, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Zurich and Brussels, by which time I was no more ready to endure travelling by sea that I took the EuroStar back to London.

I should do it again and get my pictures onto Flickr with blogs of my experiences and insights about all those cities. I think everyone should try an eye-opening voyage of discovery more than once and just take in the beauty of nature, the people, their culture and something new.

Like deja vu

So, back at the Liverpool Street Station ticket office like I did well over a decade ago, I met this helpful lady who told me the choices I had to make between day travel and night travel along with asking if I needed a cabin.

The journey appears to be longer this time, I remember then it was a catamaran that covered the journey from Harwich to Hoek van Holland in 3:45 hours, this time it would be 7 hours and maybe I should have gotten a cabin, but I later got a cabin on the ferry from much less and as a single occupier.

Setting out

I had to catch the 6:38 from Liverpool Street Station which meant I was up from 4:45AM, when I got to Harwich International, the station platform was hardly 500 yards from the ferry itself.

I was waved through, the security checks were hardly fussy, a cursory look into my rucksack - I notice this is the lightest I have ever travelled - none of the crude and music-less stripper acts that we perform at airports, the passport checks without menacing apparatchiks and the baggage check-in done almost too easily for words.

I was beginning to like this as I boarded the ferry, looked around and found a seat. I had bought an inflatable neck pillow; the seats are rarely built to support the neck if you doze off.

Connect to the skies

It was nice to know that one could use wireless internet connectivity on a satellite uplink throughout the journey, it would be slow and multimedia content will be blocked but there was enough bandwidth to surf, use Twitter and send emails.

One should as a matter of course avoid use the exorbitantly priced Mobile Maritime roaming network except in an emergency.

Having not slept that well overnight, I decided on getting a portside cabin. The word posh is apparently an acronym used for passages to India where the well-heeled travelled Portside Out and Starboard Home, if you travelled 'soph' which is by no means an abbreviation of sophisticated you were on the hottest side of the ship because that side faced the sun on the way out and the way back.

In the winter though, on the North Sea, you probably want to get as much light and sun as you can get.

The rest betters the rest

I repaired to my cabin which had a good sized bed, en-suite toilet and shower, a television with a mix of Dutch and English channels, sockets to charge my devices and wireless internet if I needed it.

I must say, apart from the passage of time and it is long, the basic comforts of travelling by ferry beat all the offerings you can have by air which is the shortest in time but most stressful to endure, by train which is longer and quite expensive, by coach which is probably longest in time, cheapest in cost but I will say from experience the most uncomfortable.

Easy for me and easy for her

Taking a shower, I noticed that the showerhead was a Hans Grohe raindance fixture and being cognisant of the tragedy that befell a 46-year old due to overexertion doing the Gangnam Style dance, I wisely moved as carefully and with as minimal exertion as possible, I just let the shower rain on me.

Let us put all disputing aside, I might just take to travelling by ferry on what seems to the calmest of seas I have been on in a very long time. This, my friends is fun and I just made friends with a toddler who is so excited to be travelling to meet her grandparents for Christmas, we all know that air travel is at best tortuous for our really young ones.

We have arrived.

Beyond the clouds

The trains are still slower

There have been times that I have planned a holiday or break up to 4 weeks ahead, but I am more an impulsive travel planner than a methodical pedant.

Once I realised that I had a bit of free time to the next major meeting, I was on-line looking for a destination and a hotel.

I started with thinking of Paris or Madrid, usually, I would not fly to Paris, getting out of CDG – the airport, for Paris can be a lesson in global navigation when you find you have boarded the train going North. So, from Amsterdam, it is better to travel by train.

What is most irksome about arranging this type of travel is that all the railway websites in the , , and allow Internet booking. Of the lot the German site is most flexible even allowing a proximity booking.

The others allow for planning but only with a lead time of 5 days, because they resort to postal services to send the ticket. The Germans allow you to print out your ticket as a valid document for travel.

Then compare this to Air France/KLM where at 03:00AM I got a flight for 12:40 the same day with a confirmed ticket and boarding pass to Barcelona – it is no wonder, trains are slower than planes not just in getting to destinations but in adopting sensible Internet technologies.

I would not be too surprised if some desk manager in the railway organisations has some theory about not adopting these ideas because it could put unionised workers out of work.

Working hard is out, working smart is in, I suppose trains would work on nuclear fuel before change comes to working practices – read never.

Hotels and not hostels

When booking for travel, I first look for a hotel, beginning with an Accor Hotel which handles the chains of Sofitel, Mercure, Sofitel, Dorint, SuiteHotel, Ibis, Formule 1 and Etap in descending order of sophistication and having an Accor Favourite Guest Card helps in confirming bookings and getting good deals.

Once that is available rather than confirmed, I book the flights and confirm all the bookings then pack my bags and catch a nap before setting off.

The weather reports

The weather was very dull, cloudy, probably with the expectation of rain with the temperature close to freezing. Then getting on the plane, it did look really small and there was lots of space, probably not half full.

I also found out that in the cramped economy class, if no one is sitting in front of you, you can push the back of the seat in front forward to make space. Well, I did.

Sunny beyond the clouds

As we lifted off, we were soon above the clouds with glorious sunlight lighting up the plane and reflecting off those natural shutters that made life on the ground less sunny.

I learnt something; the sun was always above the clouds and it took getting help outside of my strength to see the sunnier side of things from the gloom on the ground.

The same with our circumstances, sometimes we are ground in our mundane, ordinary, slow and routine norms that we fail to see beyond the clouds, especially when the clouds just sit there like forever.

The only message one then gets from those clouds is rain and snow, making us wrap up more to warm than loosen up to feel cool.

Help beyond yourself

Just like I had the help of a plane to see the better side of things, we need a help higher than us be it religious inspiration, a pep-talk, mentoring, sometime to get us out of the rat race and rut of our circumstances to see the bigger picture and scope of things.

We need to be enthused into optimism to make our mindsets adapt to the expectation of good things, successful things, confident things and healthy things.

At that point, you have the tonic for life and if you keep taking it, spring and summer are back again as the clouds are moved on and your circumstances have less dominance over the bigger perspective of things.