Day 32

Day thirty two
Monday 17th February 2020
Current position
Cloud 9 Boutique Hotel
118 Lower Buitengragt St Gardens Cape Town
8001
South Africa
S 33°55.77024'
E 18°24.50328'

Well grey skies were not going to clear up as a fine drizzle welcomed us at the start of the morning. So we did little but laze around in the room till about eleven when we ventured out for coffee and cake.
In the mean time I emailed Nathan at Premier Classe Trains to see whether the train to Johannesburg was going to run on Tuesday. He came back saying that he should know more by two o'clock. The weather brightened up a little so we could have our sandwich and tomato lunch on the sunloungers.
A further phone call to Nathan got the response that we'd have to wait until three to get an answer. By three we'd heard nothing so we decided to ditch the train and fly either to Zambia to see Victoria Falls or to Johannesburg and on to Kruger Park.
We went to STA Travel again to see the young man who was very helpful last week. He advised us that we'd need a visa to enter Zambia. I quickly found out from Google that it would take three days to process our application on line so we decided to book a flight to Johannesburg and organised an end to end tour to Kruger Park.
Unfortunately all the flights from Cape Town to Johannesburg were fully booked for tomorrow so we booked one for Wednesday and will have to spend another day in Cape Town. This is a shame as we feel we have outstayed our welcome here waiting for the non existent train. Still this is what happens when booking things as you go. Mind you if we'd booked the train six months ago like Ange we would really have been snookered. Still we have only wasted a few days which we have rather enjoyed lazing about.
I spent the rest of the afternoon applying on line for a Zambian Visa. Somehow I managed to do the whole lot on my smartphone. Filling in the forms sending copy passports and passport sized photographs plus a signed letter asking the Director General of Immigration for a Visa. I also had to make up a few bits for example where we've going to stay and the dates of travel etc. So fingers crossed that they will accept it as if not it will be an expensive mistake as the visa fee is all but a couple of hundred quid.
After the hassle of booking this lot it was nice to have a rest with a meal out at the local Chinese which had only been open for three weeks. The young guy running it had emigrated from Hong Kong ten years earlier where he'd been a banker at HSBC. He serves good food but I think he would have earned more in banking without the stress of running a restaurant especially as he only had us as customers for the evening.