The Giraffe Adventure

Our first morning was not beach weather, so we decided to go on the hunt for the wooden giraffes that we wanted to take home with us. This trip turned into a real adventure. We went up the coast to a market in Hoeff Bay that we had visited on our first trip to Cape Town, but none of the merchants had what we wanted. We met a nice girl named Hazel running one of the shops and she said that she could take us to her warehouse where she had what we wanted. We agreed and said we would follow her, but she didn’t have a car and would need to ride with us. In an instant we weighed the risk. She could sense our uneasiness and immediately said she didn’t want us to feel pressured or uneasy. She was clearly educated, spoke perfect English, was not high pressure, and had a fixed store in Hoeff Bay, so we decided to go for it. Of course a mile down the road we saw a ton of the exact giraffes that we wanted and now we were on our way to Cape Town. The ride took much longer than we thought and when we got there the warehouse looked like a high security prison. Not super scary, but I wouldn’t want to be there without Hazel. When she opened the door her mother Unis was shining the giraffe she selected for us and it was a beauty. She was 1/3 the price of the other shops and even less expensive than the other markets. So we got two and named them Unis and Hazel. The shipping was five times as much as the giraffes. Grrr.

Unis