Camps Bay

Where: Camps Bay, South Africa
When: November/December 2012
With: Dave, Divya

While the town we were staying in was absolutely beautiful, Clifton was mostly just a big neighborhood of houses and there wasn't much to do. Luckily, just a 20 minute walk down the road from our house was the town of Camps Bay. Nestled right in the side of the mountains, called the Twelve Apostles, this hot spot is the perfect combination of beach, bars and scenery.

Its palm-tree-lined main road along the beach makes you feel like your in California. Outdoor restaurants and bars line the street, each vying for your business with incredibly friendly service and some great menus. 

This town often provided the perfect place to wander at night looking for a restaurant. While we spent quite a few nights eating on this main street, perhaps the most memorable occurrence was after our all-you-can-drink sparkling wine sunset cruise. Divya, Dave and I thought we'd have a bottle of wine, eat some dinner and call it a night. But Camps Bay had something else in store for us.

After finishing our meal, our waiter told us we absolutely had to try their "secret" cocktails. When we asked what was in them, he brought over the Russian bartender who responded with "don't worry, we'll take care of you". Then we received these two lethal mixtures that looked like snowcones, and tasted even better. After the three of us inhaled these marvellously appetizing drinks, it seemed like a great idea to take up the waiter's suggestion of heading down the road to a bar called Dizzy's, the local hangout for patrons of Camps Bay. We should have known right then and there that our night was "doomed".

Dizzy's was fantastic in that gritty, homey, local bar kind of way. It had a live band, cheap shooters, and a pool table in the middle of a sand pit. We decided that the best way to blend in with the locals was to take some shots and enjoy the music. 

Suffice is to say that the night ended after several different types of spirits, playing pool with our waiter from dinner, and only leaving when the cops came to clear out the bar. At this point, we took a hazy cab ride back to our house where we decided that the best idea in the world would be to jump in the ocean at 2:30am (the water temperature was clocking in around 55F). After being kicked off the beach by security guards with flashlights, we went back up to the house to have one more drink before stumbling to bed. The next afternoon, we woke up fuzzy and bruised (climbing through the secret passage to the beach from our house while intoxicated in the dark was a terrible idea). However little we may have remembered of the night before, we had a good sense of what Camps Bay had to offer. 

While we all swore that Camps Bay would never do that to us again, we found ourselves in a similar situation one week later. It was Dave's birthday, and we all went out for pizza and drinks on the main avenue. We should have known the night would be another memorable one when Dave and Rahul locked themselves in the restaurant bathroom at dinner. In their defense, it's unusual to find a padlocked gate outside a public bathroom. 

We ended up back a Dizzy's and this time, artfully attempted to avoid eye contact with our waiter of the week before. We gave the birthday boy shots and listened to the band, and luckily kept the night far more tame than our previous experience. Either way, Camps Bay left us with a distinct feeling of happiness. And really, who couldn't feel happy following lots of booze, food, and beach?

For the rest of our trip in South Africa, click here.