Club Mykonos

The justification for booking a mini-break at a Greek theme resort in Africa is that this place is, as we imagined, toddler heaven. Mini-golf, a balcony and a sheltered lagoon bay combined with rides on a donkey called Chester = a very happy Ginger Prince.

The road out of Cape Town was dead straight and prone to shaky heat reflections. AA was driving whilst squinting for birds as I scanned the Fynbos (shrubs) holding out hope for some bigger beast. A mongoose ran out into the road and a little later we were scowled at by a bunch of ostriches and finally I spotted two zebras casually drinking and flicking flies with their tails. I never imagined that zebras just hung out on road sides, like deer do in Scotland, in a place where you can still see the jagged outline of Cape Town’s City Business District. As some of you will know unlike AA I am not one for the birds but flamingos and ostriches, like penguins, are so good they should almost be animals in my book. I thought TGP would be delighted with these unexpected sightings but he sat there in the back of the car, bare clammy legs folded up and nodded wisely before going back to looking at his picture book of farm animals. Sigh. How right we were not to book a Safari. It was a few days later, whilst walking in the West Coast National Park, that TGP uttered real shrieks of excitement as a tortoise popped its head out of its shell and scampered away from him.

Culturally driving away from Cape Town was like slipping back in time. If we had gone much further my tattoo might have come back in fashion. We passed a bar/club called Flamingos advertising Disco Dances and a Ladies Bar and then arrived at Club Mykonos, where it is still encouraged to perm your fringe, smoke inside and put all your rubbish in one bin. Our apartment looks right out onto a beautiful, secluded bay but something made me pleasantly nostalgic for holidays in the 80s. Unsurprisingly we are in the minority of non-South Africans here. Not too many visitors from Europe, what with the real Greece being right there, and everyone assumes we speak Afrikaans.

Having seen a wild ostrich for the first time it seemed only appropriate that we should come home and eat one. Our self catering apartment is equipped with a Braai (BBQ) on the balcony. Of course AA’s Braai anxiety dictated that we ate our slightly guilty ostrich burger well into the night and he followed it up with Boerewors, something like a huge, thin Cumberland, which he forced himself to eat about a meter of in one sitting, after his Ostrich burger, before predictably getting stomach cramps and meat sweats.

Another thing I have realised in Club Mykonos is that I have officially lost my nerve with the sea. There was a time when I couldn’t be near open water, day or night, without feeling the urge to pop myself into the waves but today I only managed a couple of flapping strokes before scampering back to my towel. The Atlantic ocean around Cape Town in unexpectedly cold but there is also a new element of slight shark-fear.

On the first Saturday we arrived in Cape Town, at around the time we parked in Camps Bay for dinner, someone was killed by a shark on Clifton, the next beach, and I read about the tragedy the following week in The Cape Times. The boy, who competed in the under 16 surfing championships and was a part of an initiative to teach poor South African children to surf, was bitten on the leg and drowned whilst trying to surf back to the beach. There are, on average, between one and two shark attacks every year around Cape Town so the chances of being involved in one, or even seeing one, are virtually non-existent.

Particularly when you take into account the risks we take each day on the roads.

I barely get by driving in the UK, where there is still some show of courtesy and you feel that people are genuinely avoiding collisions. I have only driven the hire car once but I get the impression that if you are slow and hesitant people will weave and duck around you to a terrifying extent. From the week after next until we buy a car, TGP and I will be confined to public transport and then I will just have to crack on and be a more aggressive driver and hide my fear.

But for now I am on holiday.