Hauptbahnhofundhopp

As others have observed before me, Cape Town and surrounds isn’t Africa as we like to imagine it. These road trip pictures are more Route 66 than most would expect, right? Much as I complained about the rain and clouds, they made for some spectacular pictures.

And just just when we were really feeling the wholesome ruggedness of life on the open road, there’s this:

To be fair, I think the “Sex” was added by a prankster, but when a “pump station” named “Ronnie’s Sex Shop” pops up in the middle of nowhere, it’s still pretty funny.

The scenic Cape Route involves driving along windy mountain roads. Shockingly, the South African approach to road maintenance is somewhat more slack than what we are accustomed to in Germany or, well, pretty much any other place I have ever been to. Every now and again, a road is closed for unspecified reasons, the signs are widely ignored, the closed roads are well frequented and, as we found out, some of them have been closed for over a year. No one seems to be too bothered about actually repairing them, because if it ain’t so broke you can’t drive on it any more, why fix it?

For your troubles, you get views like this…

…and fun obstacle courses like this

This happened more than once