01 - 03 May: Bot River to Cape Town to Johannesburg

We left KolKol after a delish breakfast (did I mention they provide you with fresh eggs, milk and butter?!) and headed home to Mom's for our last night before catching the train back to Joburg.

We had a little bit of a debacle in our quest to acquire some Cloudy Apple. We stopped at Peregrine again but they were sold out. But apparently the Houw Hoek Farmstall, which we'd passed earlier, should still have. So we decided we weren't in a rush so why not. And we managed to get their last four-pack. Yay!

For our last dinner in Cape Town, we headed to Catherina's with the folks. Shew. It was a pretty delish dinner and we discovered another good wine (which we're still trying to get more of!), Steenberg's Echo Red Blend.

The next morning we headed out early to catch our train home. This time we left on time, yay! The first half of the trip was lovely. I read a lot and we got to enjoy the scenery. But we did seem to have a carriage full of kiddies.



Sadly the next day proved to cement our decision to not use the train again any time soon. When we woke up, we were running about an hour late. A vast improvement on our trip down, you'd think? But we progressively lost more and more time.

We thought when we got to Krugersdorp station, it'd be safe to let our friends who had offered to collect us know we'd probably arrive in an hour. Unfortunately it took us over 2 hours to go 5km. Apparently there was something wrong with the signals.

Now I get that things can go wrong, but really, no one communicated well with us on either train trip and you really are stuck, waiting in the queue when things do. There is no faster option (except if they put you on a bus, which is way less comfortable).

We eventually, along with a lot of other people, decided to give up and get out at Luipaardsvlei and get a lift from there. The train did end up leaving in the 20mins after making the decision that we were left waiting for our lift, but who knows how many more stops they had along the way.

I loved the train trip. I would recommend it, but really you need a lot of books (Kindle ftw!) and to not be in any sort of hurry. And I think if you have kids under the age of 10 it's probably quite a fun experience for them. So, maybe we'll try again one day ... for our eventual kids.