Barry and I spend the next few days working on the brochure, and visiting various contacts in the trawler industry. The Task Force team have recently started looking at the Namibian fishery, and Barry introduces me to the head of the largest trawler company up there. Meanwhile, the chances of getting on a ship are beginning to look less and less, despite my meeting representatives of the company, and giving them assurances of my good intentions.
As the weekend nears, I feel gloomy, but determine to make the most of my time - taking the cable car up to see the sun set from the top of Table Mountain (and see my first sugarbirds), climbing Lion's Head at dawn, getting invited to parties and meeting lots of people.
On Sunday, I leave at dawn and head up the west coast on my own. I head inland at a place called Darling and birdwatch my way through the bush and agricultural lands, picking up blue cranes, jackal buzzard, and much more. Then further north to the West Coast National Park, a superb wetland and fynbos reserve.
I'm hardly through the gates, when I get great views of the Park's speciality, a black harrier soaring over the strandfeld vegetation, a stunning bird, all dark with a black-and-white barred tail, and endemic to southern Africa.
The tidal estuary is full of waders and seabirds, many of them familiar home birds - curlews, whimbrels, grey plovers, curlew sandpipers - but the marshes also have Kittlitz's and blacksmith plovers.
After a coffee and cake at the café, I head further north. A short detour to a viewpoint produces the bird of the day, a southern black korhaan, an endemic species of bustard that I flush accidentally from under a bush. Happy and tired, I head for home, and spend the evening listening to the three tenors singing at Kirstenbosch to a packed audience.
Monday, and Barry and I arrange to meet Barrie Rose, of Irvin & Johnson (I&J), the main trawler fishing company in South Africa. Barrie is also a birder, and explains to me the problem: they are worried I will use my trip to write controversial articles about the killing of albatrosses, articles that could undermine their European export market.
I explain that I actually want to do the opposite, to tell people back home how the use of tori-lines on his fleet is stopping the slaughter. Barrie says he will speak to his CEO. Barry and I go home, and pack our bags with a bit more hope.
Tuesday goes with no news, and we become despondent once more, so it is a pleasant surprise when Dr Tony Williams knocks on the office door and invites me to join him for a visit to the Inkata wetlands.
This pocket-handkerchief wetland was created during the construction of Century City, a massive residential and retail development to the west of Cape Town city centre. The reedbeds and pools help clean runoff, and are already host to hundreds of breeding birds. The circular trail around the site provides views of the various pools and their nesting platforms.
Malachite and pied kingfishers hover before diving, ibises fly in, and African darters, cape and crested cormorants, and African spoonbills nest on artificial platforms. An African snipe probes the damp mud, and a pair of water dikkops (relatives of our stone-curlews) shelter under a bush. Just before we leave, the warden points out a little bittern just yards away.