Cape Town Conundrum

Let me get the highly annoying side of Cape Town (or rather South Africa) out of the way in this post and then I will be able to move on to happier things in posts to follow

As entry into Port Elizabeth was not possible because of adverse weather conditions Aurora received approval to proceed into Cape Town one day early.  After a rough day and night at sea we arrived at our berth at the foot of Table Mountain at 9am on Wednesday morning.  What a spectacular setting.

We expected an hour for paperwork to be completed and hoped to proceed through immigration late morning.  At 11am the Captain announced that apparently some SA Govt. Department in Pretoria had mucked up the paperwork and we were one form missing.  Until that form had been completed and then been rubber stamped by FIVE different government departments (all in Pretoria) nobody would be allowed through immigration.  1850 passengers became imprisoned on Aurora!!  Telephone calls were made to the highest officials in P&O (or should I say the Carnival company in Miami) as well as to the British Consulate in South Africa.  All to no avail - we were NOT allowed off the ship.  Galling to say the least.

For 6 hours we stewed with anger and cursed the SA authorities.  At 3pm we heard the missing form had worked its way through the admistrative cogs of government and at last we could start the immigration process.  Fortunately I was no. 179 in the queue so by 4pm I had been granted freedom and was being whisked downtown on the shuttle bus.

So our promised 3 days in Cape Town had virtually been reduced back to the original 2 days.  Frustrating, but at least we could enjoy what time we had. 

And so Friday afternoon arrived and it was time for the ships departure.  Once again SA authorities demanded a face to face immigration inspection for the 1850 passengers and 850 crew.  Fine, no problem as SA Immigration had known we would be departing on this day at this hour for months.  Was it silly of us to expect the cruise terminal to be filled with enough Immigration staff to process 2700 people?  Obviously we were extremely silly because when the time came there were just 2 staff on duty!!!!!!!  I kid you not.  Instead of being a 1-2 hour formality the procedure took a very long 5 hours.  How on earth a riot did not break out is a mystery!

Will I ever want to come back to South Africa?  I must keep my reply polite - so a simple NO will have to do.

Having said that it did provide some of those glorious once in a lifetime memories.  More in the following posts when hopefully my anger will have subsided a little.