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Hi from South Africa, where we spent 5 days in the Western Cape. Perhaps it's because it took 3 flights to get there from Zanzibar and we arrived at our hotel in Cape Town at midnight, but this country remains a fascinating yet bewildering array of sensations. One minute you're driving through Hollywood style luxury. The next you're passing shantytown townships of aluminum and wood that look like they'll fall over with a strong wind. And then there's the accents, and the languages (eleven official ones). The place really does justify the term diverse, even though, for Africa, we stayed in the developed part. There'll be no stories about bumpy roads as the roads are great here. There were a lot of Boks whinging about the refereeing in the RWC though - oh well, can't have everything!
Having visited Joburg already (before East Africa), we flew straight to Cape Town, where we stayed on the waterfront. We spent our full day there driving the Cape of Good Hope along beautiful coastline in sunny conditions. Cape Town's suburbs and the beaches along the way were stunning. The photos tell the story best. On the way back to Cape Town we visited the wine region of Constantia, a beautiful area at the foot of Table Mountain. That night we went to the waterfront for dinner and then tried to have a night out in some edgy bars a Saffa we befriended had recommended, but 10pm was way to early for the cool kids of Cape Town to start partying and so we slunk back to our hotel and a comfy early night like a good married couple.
The next day we scaled a part of Table Mountain for good views of the city. Then we headed to the wine region of Stellenbosch. Apart from one incident on the way where google maps directed us to the townships of Cape Town flats (not a place we should have gone) instead of our hotel in Stellenbosch, we had a beautiful couple of days in the wine region, finding well priced bordeaux blends in picturesque vineyards at the foot of a stunning mountain range. The region really is very pretty (like the Napa Valley) and offers good wines at reasonable price points (unlike the Napa Valley). Oh and we watched the Wallabies fall over to the All Blacks. One more sporting disaster for Geoff during his time in this continent (time to get out of Africa!)
On our last day in Africa we drove the first part of the Garden Route to Hermanus where we watched southern right whales frolic in the bay under sunny skies. It was nice to close off our African experience watching wild creatures as we had spent much of our time here doing. Now for Brasil, arreeba arreeba! Or some Portuguese equivalent :-)
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