Cape Town - Part Two

As promised the second part of our recent holiday to Cape Town that involved some drama. I've decided to call it "Rains and Bees and Plans" (sung to the tune of 'Trains and Boats and Planes').

THE RAINS

These started on our second day as we drove towards Hermanus. On our arrival there it was falling down and the downpour continued non-stop for the next 27 hours resulting in flooding as rivers burst their banks. Depositing debris over the roads and onto the beaches and into the sea. A drive up to Caledon was not possible (see picture). 

This is the Road to Caledon. Or not !

We were told all this rain was due to a weather system called a 'cut-off low'. Never heard of this? See: www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/Cut-off-low.htm - if you're interested. Basically the slow-moving rain clouds were trapped and it just kept raining until it could rain no more. 

Though the weather cleared for our journey back to Cape Town we could not have gone back the way we came as the road was closed. Also our decision to drive further north and not take the Franschhoek Pass was lucky as this pass was not pass-able and we would have been forced back if we'd tried to go this way.

This same bad weather was the reason a few days later we found Chapman's Peak Drive closed, and it would remain so for the whole holiday.

A ball of bees

THE BEES

Our first morning at Margaret's mums place we noticed all these flying insects from our bedroom window. Causing the gardener Simon to take cover until the air cleared.

As we all ventured back out into the garden I noticed inside a tree, clustered around a branch, a very large wriggling ball of bees. To say this looked like trouble is an understatement. We drove to the Local Municipality to report it and organise a bee man to come round. Some advice suggested they may not stick around and fortunately before the 'bee' man arrived the entire ball of bees flew off to trouble someone else.

Later that same day, probably while our heads were still a little buzzy, our hire car began to rebel. First we set the alarm off, somehow! Then we couldn't get the petrol cap open at the filling station. Out came the car manual, for a second time, but to no avail. We simply couldn't open the thing and we were in dire need of petrol. A passerby helped us with an enlightening display of car key remote pressing and pushing on the petrol cap cover. 
Nothing about any of this in the manual....!

THE PLANS

This final part is all about swallows and flying south for the winter. It spreads over most of the second week of our trip and is very much an on-going story.... 

So Part Two of Part Two will follow shortly...

Newspaper article after the storm

Clearing up, after surviving the big rain of 2013