Our journey back to Cape Town was far less smooth than the outwards journey.The bad weather slowed us down and we spent an extra night on board.
We were pleasantly surprised that such good food could be served so long after the ship had provisioned in Cape Town - although the draught beer did run out!
Disembarkation at Cape Town is the least pleasurable part of the trip - particularly if your name begins with a letter at the tail end of the alphabet.
We were up for an early breakfast at 6.30, and were disembarked about a dozen at a time. We finally got ashore at around 10.00 a.m.!
"This is Africa" said the captain.Next time we will change our name by dead poll - Aaron seems a good bet!
The Purser still kept his good humour, although he too wanted to get off the ship to see his family. I'm not sure who the Chief Engineer was phoning.
Despite it all we left with very happy memories of our time on the ship which a couple of hours twiddling our thumbs in the lounge could not erase. The R.M.S. is clearly feeling its age a little - aren't we all - but it is a pleasure to travel on her.
Postscript
Our slow disembarkation proved the beginning of a not very good day.
The security gates at our guest house in Cape Town jammed and we thought we wouldn't catch our flight to Johannesburg.
When we got to the airport we found our flight had been cancelled.
We were looking forward to a steak and a bottle of red wine, but when we finally arrived in Johannesburg we found that our hotel had no restaurant!
It seemed a big deal then, but now just makes us laugh.
No comments:
Post a Comment