Cancelling our trip to South Africa in March of 2020 was the first thing that made COVID feel really real. In hindsight, I feel incredibly lucky that cancelling a vacation was the biggest blow to befall me during that incredibly scary and unknown period of time. It seems so silly to have been upset about it in light of how bad things got for so many people.
Fast forward to 2023 and my childhood best friend and I were no longer celebrating our 30th birthdays but our 33rd. But this once-in-a-lifetime trip was well worth the wait.
Day 1
LGA to ATL
Our journey to Cape Town started out with a lift to the airport - a real treat in NYC! After Allison’s boyfriend (soon to be fiancé!) dropped us off at LaGuardia, we boarded what we expected would be a quick and easy flight to Atlanta where we would have a generous 4 hour layover.
We boarded on time, took our seats, watched the safety video and even taxied our way down the runway. And then, an announcement. Thunderstorms in the area were blocking our flight path to Atlanta and the FAA had shut down the skies.
We continued to get updates - they were looking for potential routes to get us there but it wasn’t looking good. The most frustrating part was not a drop of rain or a rumble of thunder was happening at LaGuardia.
We remained on the runway which I took as a good sign, until we were going on hour 2. That’s when people started to get antsy. Allison and I conferred and started to wonder what our best bet was - people had started disembarking, and as our window closed to make our connection, we wondered if we should go home and try again the next day with a flight through Copenhagen (the direct Atlanta to Cape Town flight we were taking only operates once or twice a week).
But going home felt like moving backwards, and we figured we would try our luck at making it to Atlanta and keeping our fingers crossed. By the time we were cleared to take off, it was late enough that the only chance we had was a significant delay for our Atlanta to Cape Town flight or some miracle where they decided to hold the plane for the 10 or so of us that were stuck at LaGuardia.
At this point I don’t know why, but I was fairly optimistic. We couldn’t have waited all this time and then have things start off so terribly! I travel so much for work, and I so rarely missed connections or had such major delays, surely my personal vacation would work out...
While in the air I had WiFi and could see that our Atlanta to Cape Town connection had not only not waited for us, it had departed EARLY.
The second we landed in Atlanta I was on the phone with Delta, physically nauseous, trying to rebook Allison and I on new flights while screaming to her rows apart the disembarking plane we had been stuck on for 4 hours more than we should have been.
I rebooked us on a flight the following night, but now we would be flying Atlanta to Johannesburg and transferring in Johannesburg to a flight to Cape Town.
The next stop on our journey was not Cape Town, but the Atlanta Airport Delta Help Desk, where we stood in line for a very long time and eventually were able to get vouchers for a hotel, a ride to the hotel, and meals. Unfortunately, we were told that it would take hours if we tried to reclaim our luggage, so we headed to the hotel with just our carry on bags - which for me was a backpack with absolutely nothing useful (none of my medicine, toiletries, change of clothes - all of the things that they tell you to always pack in a carry on!)
It was very late when we got to the hotel but the front desk staff were very pleasant and we had ordered some UberEats delivery in the Uber over which we inhaled before going to bed, trying our best to be optimistic.
DAY TWO
ATL TO JNB
In the morning, we enjoyed a big hotel breakfast paid for by Delta and then wandered around the mall a little bit where I bought myself some workout gear and took advantage of an extra day with a hotel gym and Peloton! We were incredibly happy when the hotel told us that we could check out at 4 PM - a very generous late check out that they’d bill back to Delta.
When 4 rolled around, they gave us a key so we could chill out by the rooftop pool until it was time to go grab some food and head to the airport. Waiting for our flight, we were cautiously optimistic and everything went smoothly (except for the Love is Blind Live Reunion which I was trying to watch on my cell phone. Netflix’s first attempt at live programming was a disaster of epic proportions!)
From my journal on the flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg [a lot of repeat information here]
11:11 make a wish!
I’m about 60 minutes from landing in Johannesburg, South Africa.
I should have been landing in Cape Town more than 24 hours ago but such is life when your idea of fun is traveling halfway across the globe.
Allison and I handled it all in stride, if I do say so myself. There were no tears - but a lot of nauseous stomachs.
When we finally made it to a hotel bed in Atlanta at 1:10 AM Sunday morning, Allison said she would go into the lobby to pick up our delivery food.
“I feel like you’ve been our spiritual sherpa all day it’s the least I can do.”
It suddenly made me realize that I hadn’t felt anything like a spiritual sherpa all day. I had worried that I was being a selfish, dictatorial decision maker that was making all of the wrong choices.
I pushed for us staying on the flight from Atlanta just on the off chance that our connection to Cape Town was delayed. It got later and later and less and less likely that we could ever make a connection and yet, my stubbornness and hopefulness made me keep sitting on that plane.
We didn’t make the connection.
We landed and I immediately got on the phone with Delta where I made the unilateral decision that our attempt #2 would be a Sunday 10 PM flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg and then a connection to Cape Town that would have us arrive at 10 PM Monday night.
The woman was so helpful, staying with us on the phone for 45 minutes and coaching me on what to say as we ran through the terminal searching for a gate agent who could print re-issued boarding passes for us. (Thank you Chanel, and thank you to the gate agent who finally helped me and got me a toiletry kit!)
But everyone else on our flight was rebooking to connect from Amsterdam to Cape Town and I was second guessing if I had panicked and made the wrong choice.
After splitting up - I went to the International help desk to see about getting our luggage (no luck- it would have taken 3 hours) and Allison stayed at the domestic help desk - we met up with our Delta-issued vouchers for hotel, transportation and food.
Next was time to choose which hotel we would stay in from the list of options Delta gave us. Who made that call? Me, of course. A decision that I then questioned when Allison pointed out it was 30 minutes away.
We arrived to a line of other Delta passengers trying to check in while I hangrily scrolled through Door Dash refusing to pay $55 for a pizza and instead opting for a quicker diner food delivery and then second guessing that decision as well.
It was music to our ears when the front desk told us they would bill Delta back for our late check out and we could have the room until 4 PM the next day. Things were looking up.
We showered, ate our diner food, and were asleep around 2:30 AM.
Sunday in Atlanta - we woke up verrrrrry leisurely and the Nespresso in the room had me jumping on my bed singing Honeycomb.
We chatted through how we were going to make our new itinerary work, and then headed downstairs for brunch. Everyone we encountered in Atlanta was incredibly nice. From the waiters and waitresses (free croissants and coffees), to the woman at Gap who told us about her time in Ghana, to our Lyft drivers and the Delta agent who “worked a miracle” to get us our boarding passes ahead of time for our connection in Johannesburg which we were stressing about.
It really does make YOU want to be nicer when the people around you are!
We went for a shop at the mall where I treated myself to a nice workout fit from Abercrombie and a pair of underwear from Forever 21 before heading back to the hotel and getting in a Peloton bike ride and yoga/stretch.
After that we had to check out of our room but they let us stay and chill at the pool where I finished book #1 of the trip (Almond) and took a little snooze.
Picked up food at the Flower Child near the hotel and headed back to the airport where we purchased $45 worth of snacks from Delta meal vouchers.
The Love is Blind live reunion failed to start but we got on a flight and that is all that matters!
Allison and I sat together in a row with an empty middle seat which has been immensely amazing. These seats are TIGHT and I’m stressing a little about being the window seat on the way home with people I don’t know.
Hours 0-2 Read, Ate Dinner
Hours 2-6 Sleep while listening to my “Places” playlist
Hours 6-7 Read
Hours 7-11 Sleep
Hours 11-13 Watching the Long Walk to Freedom
Hours 13-14 Breakfast, Write this
So glad I watched Long Walk to Freedom. I cried. How are we so blessed with such amazing people on this planet? I also had respect for the South African president and government who believed in democracy enough to let there be free elections even though they knew it meant their loss of power.
43 minutes to landing and then hopefully one more flight today. PLEASE let us make this connection I don’t know if I can take a night in the airport and the loss of another day of our trip :( It would mean no time in Cape Town and having to consider cancelling Franschhoek to get in a Cape Town day which I don’t even want to consider!
JNB TO CPT
We landed in Johannesburg and celebrated the fact that we were officially in South Africa. It wasn’t the city we needed to be in, but we were taking any win we could. We claimed our bags and re-checked them at the South African Airways counter before sitting down and chatting with another couple from our disastrous LGA to ATL leg of the journey. Misery loves company! Our Johannesburg to Cape Town flight was delayed, but nothing drastic. Soon, we were headed to Cape Town!
We landed in Cape Town and our excitement at having finally made it to our destination was incredibly short lived when it became obvious that our luggage had not joined us in Cape Town. At this point is was well past 10:00 PM and the only person at the airport was a luggage handler - no one from South African Air and no way to fill out any sort of official missing luggage report (we would spend the next 24 hours being asked for our report number, case number, incident report etc…which did not exist).
With not much to do other than wonder how the heck this had happened, we got an Uber and headed to our hostel (we stayed at 91 Loop). I had emailed them from Atlanta to let them know we would be arriving a day + late, but apparently they didn’t read the email because when we got to the front desk they let us know that our reservation had been cancelled. It was midnight, we had been traveling in the same clothes for 3 days, and we were being told we didn’t have a place to sleep. I was entirely numb to bad news at that point and I think I just stood there staring at the front desk employee. Eventually, they said they would see if there was another room available and hallelujah, there was.
We got into the room and both tried calling Delta to try to get some sort of record of our missing bags established but they basically told us it wasn’t there problem once we had handed the bag over to South African Airways. If you travel frequently, you know airlines like Delta and United have an easy feature where you can see exactly where your bag is, when it’s been loaded onto the plane, when it’s headed for baggage claim, etc. Let’s just said South African Airways does not have the same kind of technology.
We gave up for the night and decided all we could do was try to get some sleep and maybe wake up from this nightmare in the morning.
DAY THREE
robben island and cpt baggage claim
You know when you break up with someone, and you wake up in the morning and there’s a little blip of time before you remember what happened? That’s what it was like waking up in Cape Town the next morning. For a lovely little moment I was waking up on vacation in South Africa. And then I remembered that we had no luggage.
We decided we were going to go on our tour of Robben Island (you can buy tickets here) and try to just make the most of it but not before standing in the hostel lobby trying to get in touch with the Johannesburg airport to try to track down our bags. Allison actually reached someone, and they took down our information and said they would be in touch - we gave them the contact information for the hostel and the woman at the front desk was so lovely - she took our WhatsApp information and said she would let us know if she heard anything. She also gave Allison sunscreen, because ginger + African sun is a dangerous combination.
We got an Uber and headed to the V&A Waterfront and boarded the tour boat. We sat down and I got a text from the hostel - they had located our bags in Johannesburg and said they would be on the first flight to Cape Town which landed around 1 PM! We were overjoyed and finally felt like we could enjoy something.
The Robben Island tour was amazing - we got our first whiff of a seal colony which is NOT a great smell - but we learned a ton. The tour is really incredible because there’s a portion where you go into the prison, you get paired with a tour guide who was at one point a prisoner there. This was our first experience (which would become a recurring theme on the trip) with just how recent all of the history in South Africa is. You were constantly meeting and talking to people who had been affected by Apartheid and its dismantling and had lived through this thing that’s in history books but is also very much an ongoing issue.
Other than still being in our same clothes, we really enjoyed the tour and I would say it’s a must-do for anyone in Cape Town.
Following the tour, we ditched our plans to hike Lion’s Head (this really hurt my soul) to instead head back to the airport in anticipation of our suitcases arrival.
We followed the instructions we were given at the Information desk to get through a back of house route through the airport to baggage claim (“Go to the Menzie’s desk…”). Menzies is a global luggage handler, used at a bajillion airports, but until you’re trying to track down missing luggage in a foreign country, you probably wouldn’t know anything about luggage handlers. Naturally, two 33 year old girls had to giggle at “Menzies.” This would become a recurring joke that can still make us bust out in laughter. We were about to get intimate with Menzies because…spoiler alert….our luggage did not arrive on the flight they had told us it would.
We queued up at the South African Airways counter and were on the same page - we are not leaving until we have our suitcases.
It would be about 8 hours at the airport that day, spent with Bongani from South African Airways who made countless phone calls on our behalf. I still don’t know what made him decide he was going to try so hard to help us - but his kindness is something I still think about often.
Those hours at the airport were probably the worst in the 3-day saga. I was done - we had put on good game faces, talking about using our trip insurance, going to the mall and buying clothes, soldiering on. But there was a point that afternoon where I just wanted to go home. I was so done. Allison came back from talking to her parents on the phone and was just crying. We switched on and off who was the one handling the logistics and try to be optimistic and who was emotionally fragile.
We paced, we ate gift shop snacks when there were moments we weren’t nauseous and when Bongani made progress we bought him a gift card as a thank you. This man literally didn’t leave when his shift was over because he wanted to make sure the bags actually made it.
Finally, at 7:40 PM our purple and blue suitcases came out on the baggage claim belt and the relief was INSANE.
We took a selfie with our bags and Bongani, obviously, and headed back to the hostel where we ate dinner and finally slept without a pit in our stomach.
From my journal:
Well, no more flight delays and we made it to Cape Town but our luggage didn’t.
Which meant that we essentially DID lose another day in Cape Town.
Waking up Tuesday morning after going to bed at 2:30 am after wasted time on the phone with Delta, we had knots in our stomach knowing that no one had information about our luggage. We spent the early morning down in the hostel lobby where they helped us use the phone to call Johannesburg airport.
Then we headed out to TRY to enjoy the Robben Island tour. We got a text from the hostel before the ferry left that our luggage would be arriving at the airport at 11:55 am on a Fly Safair flight and were SO pumped. It let us enjoy the Robben Island tour and I was SO glad that I had watched Long Walk to Freedom on the plane because it made seeing Nelson Mandela’s cell that much more incredible and meaningful.
The tours are so moving because they’re conducted by ex political prisoners who still live on the island. I also really loved learning about the cave where they would put sand in the bathroom buckets and teach the 30% of prisoners who were illiterate how to read and write at “Robben Island University” where the saying was “each one teach one.” We also saw the pile of stones at the Limestone Quarry that all prisoners had set a rock on to symbolize the different colors of Africa.
After the tour (we saw some seals in the V&A Waterfront harbour and caught our first glimpses of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head) we headed back to the airport only to find that our luggage was in fact still missing.
We then spent 8 hours there with the kindest man from SAA who worked tirelessly and ultimately got our luggage from Joburg to Cape Town at 7:40 pm. We went back to the hostel, showered and ate some pizza before a finally stress free night of sleep.
DAY FOUR
AIRBNB EXPERIENCES FULL DAY TOUR
The next morning we enjoyed the hostel breakfast and headed to the meeting location for our full day peninsula tour with Airbnb Experiences and The Neighbourgood Experience (previously Local Knowledge).
The coffee shop we started at (Nourish’d - Green Point location) was *chef’s kiss* and we were just so excited to actually be in Cape Town, on vacation. The tour included a drink from the coffee shop and we met our tour guide (Andile) and the rest of the people that would be joining us.
I can’t explain how amazing it was after 72 hours of straight stress, anxiety, phone calls, logistics and brain energy to sit back and have someone handle everything for an entire day. Everyone ON the tour was so wonderful and each of the stops was better than the next.
St. James Beach
We stopped for some photos of the iconic colorful beach houses.
Kalk Bay Harbour
A cute little seaside town where we had some time to walk around the shops. After, we drove a little further and stopped to meet the sea lions (again, smelly, but very cute) and enjoyed some amazing fish and chips at a local spot (Kalky’s).
Boulders beach
Crowded, but worth it to see so many cutie little penguins waddling around the beach! We also saw our first “check for penguins” sign - sometimes they go under cars!
Cape Point reserve
The drive from Boulder’s Beach to Cape Point Reserve along the coast was absolutely stunning. The natural beauty of South Africa really started to set in. The wind in my hair was…aggressive…but a vibe. We hiked up to the Cape Point Lighthouse (I obviously loved the uphill climb) and saw where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.
When we got back down we encountered the baboons that Andile had warned us about- take out any and all food and you’re just asking to be attacked! It was a little sad for me, someone who loves monkeys, to see that they were actually quite terrifying (we did see some babies from afar and they were adorable!)
We also stopped by for the iconic “Cape of Good Hope” photo and then Andile found us a spot free of baboons along the water where we set up a picnic. We ate sandwiches, sampled different South African beers, and had great conversations that reminded me of why traveling is so important. We learned that it’s super rare for women to drink beer in South Africa (they opt for cider), so Andile was loving all the ladies downing IPAs.
Chapmans peak drive
This scenic route is Cape Town’s version of the Pacific Coast Highway and it was absolutely stunning in the golden hour before sunset. The pictures I snapped when we pulled over are some of my favorites ever. It looked unreal!
Our final spot was a lookout point for “sundowners” - imagine being made a gin and tonic and watching the most incredible sunset after 3 of the worst travel days of your life. Finally in South Africa and watching the sun set on your third continent. We could not have asked for a better day with a better tour guide and group.
cape town to franschhoek
On our ride back to Cape Town, we told Andile that we were continuing on that night to Franschhoek and he was like “uh, how?” He was worried we weren’t going to find an Uber to take us all the way there and said if we found ourselves in a pickle, to let him know and he could drive us. Again, everyone we met was so ridiculously nice.
Luckily, we were able to get an Uber. Unluckily, my anxiety decided to go crazy on the ride and I was fully convinced that we were being taken and about to be murdered. We were not - our driver dropped us at our bed and breakfast and waited in the driveway until he saw we got safely inside.
We took a quick stroll to see if anything was open, but ended up eating Poptarts, goldfish, popcorn, Sour Patch Kids and other snacks from the Atlanta airport as our very balanced dinner. From our quick walk, we could tell that Franschhoek was very different - very white.
We went to bed in anticipation of an early wake up to start our journey on the wine tram!
From my journal:
I’m typing this from the back of a van in the middle of our full day Cape Coast tour which so far has been an absolutely amazing day.
While I will sadly not get to summit Lions Head or Table Mountain, I did start the day with a dirty chai, took pictures with colorful changing houses in St. James, shopped in Kalk Bay, ate fish and chips and saw sea lions on the pier, hiked to the Cape Point lighthouse, took a picture at the south western most point and picnicked with new friends while sampling South African beer (my first drink in 7+ months and couldn’t have asked for a more picturesque setting).
The people here have been absolutely incredibly kind. Our tour guide today had such beautiful things to say about LGBTQIA rights, abortion rights, and women’s rights in general and it really just fills me with hope to know halfway across the world other people see things the same way I do. Travel should be required to everyone in the world.
We learned how he is going back to school because during COVID they took back the application fees and can now go to school and pay back interest free loans afterwards. He’s the bread winner in his family since his father died AND a single father to a 10 year old daughter who he said he can never imagine making a woman have an unwanted pregnancy because the men can just leave.
These things that are somehow so divisive in the states are just like… “let people live” in other places, as it should be! And we think we are this evolved place.
Going to stop typing so I can look up and take in everything passing by - so far, so beautiful.
*This part of the itinerary - where we went from a full day tour in Cape Town to an almost two hour Uber ride to Franschhoek at 8 PM - not my best work. In retrospect, we agreed that we should have just stayed in Cape Town and done Franschhoek as a day trip from Cape Town.
*We Ubered everywhere in Cape Town during the brief time we were there. I think had we been there longer we might have felt fine in some areas walking around during the day. But Uber is amazing in Cape Town (and very affordable) and we never had any issues.
*In case you’re interested in the plans we missed in Cape Town - here are the things that had been on the itinerary:
Dinner Options: Biesmiellah (for chicken curry, samosas and bobotie), The Lawns at Roundhouse (great sunset spot), Codfather
Drinks: fable (small plates & cocktails)
Shopping along Bree, Kloof and Long Streets: Mungo and Jemima, African Trading Port, Pan African Market, Coffee at Yours Truly
Hike Table Mountain: After a lot of research, I was planning on taking an out and back route that starts in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and follows Kasteleelspoort Path to Echo Valley to Smuts Track and Skeleton Gorge. There’s also the option to take the cable car up and hike Platteklip Gorge up/down.
Breakfast: Hemelhuijs
Lunch: Miriams Kitchen (for a Gatsby!), Pot Luck Club (definitely look up their reservation process - I woke up in the middle of the night to make sure I got one when they were released!)
Bo-Kaap Neighborhood
Woodstock Neighborhood: Vintage and the City, The Old Biscuit Mill
Lion’s Head Sunset Hike: Search for Wally’s Cave (but I didn’t tell you to go off trail…)
