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Pre-arrival & arrival
Cell phones & SIM cards
Cape Town (and most of South Africa) has great mobile phone reception. Calls and mobile data will be significantly cheaper with a local SIM or an eSIM than than roaming with your home provider.
SIM card
If you are coming from overseas, we’d recommend that you get a SIM card for your phone at the airport. If you are from the US (and some other countries), you will first need to confirm that your phone isn’t locked to one specific network and that you can add other SIM cards.
Vodacom and MTN are the main two carriers. The process to register a SIM card is simple and straightforward at the airport: you just need to show your passport, pay, and they’ll activate it for you.
(If you don’t do it at the airport, you’ll have to go to an MTN or Vodacom store, provide a document stating your South African “proof of address” like a utility bill or bank statement with your name and a South African address on it —which you won’t have as a visitor. Trust us: it will be faster to Uber back to the airport another day than to try to deal with all that red tape at a store)
You can add money or mobile data, right at the airport. If you run out, you can use the MTN or Vodacom or Snapscan apps to top up, or do so at most supermarkets.
eSIM
Alternatively, if your phone supports eSIMs, you can get internet-connected without the need to get a SIM card. We use when traveling, especially when in a place for a short time (as it cuts down on admin time at the airport). Use promo code WERNER8667 and we both will get a small discount!
The biggest advantage of eSIMs is that you will be connected from the minute your airplane touches down, enabling you to send messages to those back home, and get an Uber right away.
(Note 4G/5G/LTE data are usually faster and cheaper with Vodacom and MTN than an eSIM. You could also do both: get a physical SIM card, and then use the Airalo eSIM as a backup)
Cash
You will probably not need a lot of money while you are in South Africa, but you’ll need some (including R400 to leave for our cleaning fee), so the airport is a good and safe place to grab that.
🚕 Getting to the apartment
The address is . The building is called Bagamoya and you’ll be in unit 10, on the top floor at the back of the building.
Ride Sharing / Taxis from the airport
Cape Town is served by both
and
. We use both but prefer Uber. (Bolt is often cheaper than Uber, but with longer waiting times and older cars). Driving/Parking
If you’re driving, please make sure you only park in our parking bay, in front of the building, below, or elsewhere on the street.
Do not drive your vehicle into the side entrance pas the gate, not even to drop off your bags. This is for permanent residents/owners only (we don’t allow delivery vehicles in either) and has been a source of quite a lot of friction among the building owners.)
While this is a dedicated parking bay, it is still accessible from the street, not behind a fence. Please never leave anything in the car and never leave the car unlocked, even if you’re just quickly running upstairs. There have been stories of visitors leaving bags on the backseat for an hour while they grabbed a meal, just to get back to a smashed window and a missing bag.
🚪Entering and exiting
Entering the main building gate (electronic)
If you have a South African number, or an international one that will be able to make calls or send SMS while in South Africa, send us that number before arrival and we will program it into the gate. You can then call the gate (or send it an SMS) to open it up when you first arrive.
Do one of the following (either works) when you are in front of the main gate:
Either option should open the entrance gate to the right.
The gate closes automatically after a few seconds.
(If you are stuck, we can also remotely open the gate from our phones or we can call a neighbour to help; assuming we’re on the same time zone / awake at that time).
Walk to the back of the parking area and take the furthest staircase, up to the top floor, flat number 10.
Entering our flat
On our white gate, you’ll find a lock box. Use the code we gave you to open it and find the key to the gate. Remember to close the lock box and scramble the code afterwards.
Next, the white door has two locks: the bottom door lock (via a key, which you won’t use) and the black electronic door lock (via an access code, which you’ll use).
During your stay, you’ll only be using the electronic door lock.
To unlock it:
When leaving, you should lock it by entering the code and the lock/unlock button again (basically, steps 1-3 above). Wait for it to lock fully and double-check that it is in fact locked.
Security note: Always remember to lock both the door and the security gate when leaving the property. We also lock both at night.
Inside the flat, by the photo wall, we left a flat gate key and a main street gate remote for you. You can use this from now instead of calling the gate’s number, should you prefer to. Note that there are two buttons. One of the buttons opens the gate on the OTHER side of the building, and the other button opens the one you’ll use at the main entrance.
Parking
As noted in , we have a dedicated garage (locked, our car is in there) and the bay in front of it, so you are always welcome to park there.
If you have more than one vehicle, the second vehicle needs to park elsewhere on the street, not in any of the other bays or in front of any of the garages.
During tourist season (Dec-Feb), with the growing number of Airbnbs, we find that sometimes people end up parking in that bay, thinking it’s normal street parking. If this happens, leave an angry note on their window to let them know not to do it again, and just park on the street. There’s usually a space available nearby.
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