Part 6 - REFLECTIONS
I suppose the first thing to note is the fortunate availability of Redemption seats to get us there and back cheaply and comfortably. £500 each could be described as a bargain! It would however need a jolly good sale to persuade us to actually pay for this expensive route, which would typically cost in the region of £4,000 each in CW. We’ve been lucky 3 years running now - I wonder whether we can be that lucky again for Dec 2019?
The overall strategy of the ‘3 Towns’ worked extremely well, especially as each destination and hotel were noticeably different. It felt like having 3 separate holidays! Hermanus was, for us, a new destination and proved highly enjoyable - missing out Cape Town this time proved fully justified. Returning to F’hoek and S’bosch meant comfortable and stress-free familiarity, with the added bonus of knowing which room to book for our best advantage. And with all 3 hotels being privately-owned, there was no trace of cookie-cutter anodyne accommodation!
Whilst F&B is pretty cheap by UK standards, our hotels weren’t. OK, we picked expensive rooms and hotels for most of the trip. Daily rates on B&B terms for us were:
Hermanus: 3,940R/day = c. £218
F’hoek: 4,450R//day = c. £247
S’bosch: 2,390R/day = c. £132
Having mentioned F&B, we were typically paying around 65R (£3.50) for a
large glass of
good wine, or a bottle at 140R (under £8). Supermarket wine for the room fridge came in at about 80R/£4.50 (or even less if you’re not fussy) so the hotel/restaurant mark-ups were very modest.
Having a known and utterly reliable taxi driver made changing locations painless. His charges were also very reasonable - 450R for the short runs and 650R for the longer ones, or roughly £25 and £36.
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I think that’s about it. We are utterly convinced that a couple of weeks in the Western Cape suits us perfectly, and is undoubtedly our favourite destination for a variety of reasons (weather, food, wine, people). However, we have other places to go in 2019, with the schedule currently showing up to July … Phoenix, AZ [again], Malta [again] and St Lucia [again, but a new hotel!]. Work in progress for September and December, hopefully Northern Virginia and the Western Cape again! It’s hard work being retired!!
