1961: By Ladybird round Africa

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Casting aside distracting thoughts of Heidi, feather boas, ostrich meat and ketchup we continue along the South African coast:



This is about as far south as we're going to get and it's remarkable that Cape Town is only about 34 degrees S, which means there's still another 46 degrees of Southern Ocean till you reach Antarctica. Even the tip of South America doesn't reach 60 degrees S - though there are penguins here in South Africa.

Coming back over Port Elizabeth:



At some stage during this flight we will cross the invisible 'border' between the Indian Ocean (which reaches Australia and Burma) and the Atlantic (that laps the shores of Greenland, Morocco and Brazil)...



Map of the exit from Port Elizabeth, flying out over the Indian Ocean, turning round and going over Cape Recife towards Western Cape Province and the Atlantic.

Port Elizabeth is, as mentioned before, on Algoa Bay, with St Francis Bay beyond to the west.



Then, after Plettenberg Bay we will overfly Knysna, then George (visited earlier in the DC-3), before continuing inland in a straight line to Cape Town and the far side of the continent.

It's a pity that we'll arrive at one of the most scenic cities in the world in the dark, but there should be spectacular views later when we fly on to Kimberley in broad daylight...



Someone else flying about in the African night, he's going from Bloemfontein International (as FABL is now) to George:

[Willy]

Willy told me that his brother-in-law once had an emu which they cooked for Thanksgiving, and that was a bit tough too...

Actually it was my uncle that's about my age. He got it into his head to raise emus to market. Problem was that there wasn't a market for them other than people wanting to raise them for the market. The whole thing didn't last very long.

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Well, they found a use for that Thanksgiving one. Another good 'Big Bird' story is that Darwin knew there were two types of Rhea when he visited South America with H.M.S. Beagle. He'd shot and preserved one kind, but never found the smaller variety. One evening they were eating dinner with some gauchos when he realised it was on the plate..! So they had to get all the bones together for the specemin to send back to the other scientists in London.

Let us proceed towards Cape Town:



Largest town below was Knysna:



You can see the Cape Town Airport lights from quite a distance coming in at night:



Closer...



...and we're down:



Very dark at the moment, but this is the second busiest S African airport and all will be revealed later when we leave.



Apologies for the purple lines in this one, but the nearby takeoff looked good so snapped the screenie quickly:



How you come in over False Bay, the Cape of Good Hope curving round below. The harbour, which we'll see in daylight, is at Table Bay on the western side: