After a horrifically turbulent flight from Iguassu to Sao Paulo and a 6 hour wait at the airport and a nice long comfortable SAA flight, I arrived safe and sound in Johannesburg. It felt wonderful being back in Africa, I woke up during the flight in a state of panic of where I was as I had been travelling nonstop for two weeks and was pretty confused every morning when I woke up but seeing the beautiful sunrise over the African landscape made me remember exactly where I was. I checked in fine and boarded my flight to Cape Town; I can't even describe how it felt being on that flight, a mix of nervousness, excitement, relief and shame that I disappointed people by leaving that tour.

Soon enough I was reunited with Chris who was waiting at the airport for me, just seeing him again after a month apart felt incredible, we were both nearly in tears and couldn't even move we were so shocked and amazed to see each other, typical airport arrivals gate moment! The first few days were just like a dream, I couldn't believe I wasn't in south America anymore and I was with Chris in Cape Town which he told me so much about, so seeing and experiencing things he only talked about but I was actually doing now was so surreal.

Cape Town is THE most beautiful city I have ever visited, it's so small it only has that "large town" feel, sort of like Exeter, the backdrop of table mountain, the ocean breeze...it's all just wonderful. It's a developed city but still hasn't managed to totally spoil the land space; you can't go anywhere without seeing greenery and the city is surrounded by hills and the mountain so I guess they had no choice but to not build up the side of the mountain. The thing that makes this city so special though is the incredible people, it's the only city I have been to where the vibe is so slow and relaxed, none of this fast paced life, things are just so quiet and peaceful here, even the "busy" areas are extremely quiet in comparison to most places. And the beaches, oh my word, it's just surrounded by beautiful white sanded beaches with incredible white tipped waves, everywhere you look is a post card shot, you just can't get away from it.

So I spent my first week in total awe of this place. As with all city experiences go, if you have a person familiar with the place and show you around, you enjoy yourself so much more. We went out to a few bars in the first week so I could meet his friends, it was so strange meeting the people Chris had told me about in S.America and knowing all of his friends but not meeting them, and same for them, Chris had told them all about me so it was funny meeting these people each other had been told about. Coming from south America it was quite a culture shock to see some "normal" nightlife, like how people go out to bars and restaurants and then party in a club whereas in a place like Brazil, there's drinking going on EVERYWHERE, you can buy cans of 40% cuchasa for god's sake, every street corner will be a man with a cooler box selling booze and some plastic chairs to sit on. Here I'm back to normal civilized culture...and im in Africa! It's even more civilized than England, you still see plastered people on the street and can buy booze whenever, you can't buy alcohol here after 9pm or anytime on Sundays. It's shocking considering the amount people do drink here. They have like speakeasies here called Shabeans and they're everywhere in the slums selling alcohol all night, which is a cultural experience in itself. I've been to one in a place called Morningstar (all of the slums have really pretty names).

Anyway back to Cape Town, we went to Kirstenboche Botanical Gardens for Chris' friend's birthday when I first arrived. It was stunning, the largest botanical garden in the southern hemisphere, created by Cecil Rhodes (the English guy who mapped out Rhodesia and had a huge part in the Boer wars). The gardens were amazing, I've been there several times now and it's just impossible to walk round all of it. What I couldn't get over is how developed this place is, the V&A waterfront is one of the best malls I've been to, cinemas, cafes, bars, rest aunts, shops like Gucci and Prada line the walkways, the aquarium next to it and next to that is a huge 5* hotel being built on manmade islands....like a Dubai idea. There's fancy shops and restaurants everywhere in the city, Long St is the oxford street of Cape Town although probably 3/4 smaller and everything is so damn cool and stylish here, I don't think I've ever seen a city of such stylish young people everywhere.

Although it would seem that this seems like any other 1st world country, the luxuries are there but that's about it. No one can get away from crime here, there's carjacking everywhere, robbing and muggings are rife wherever you are and when I was so shocked about the amount of s.africans that drink and drive here, there way more likely to be knifed walking home than crashing their car and dying. It's common to hear Chris and his friends talking about their own mugging experiences and they all just laugh it as its part of everyday life and blame themselves for being stupid for getting themselves in situations, not blaming the person robbing you.

The whole race issue is a huge subject here, most people that live in the city are white as they can afford the expensive houses, the $4million homes being built constantly here, mainly for holiday homes so people hardly live there at most times of the year. There's a area called District 6 which is pretty famous, where all the cape colored's were told to move out of the city to small towns that the government built for them and now there's huge housing projects to bring them back to district 6. cape colored's are the majority here, they have much lighter skin than people I've seen in other parts of Africa and are the descendents of the bushmen and slaves from around the 17th century. The Malays are the descendents of Muslim slaves as many were brought during the years of the spice route from the east.

The Dutch East India Company in the late 1600s were the first to restock on food, water and supplies so the ships to get to the East Indies and from then on all ships going to and from Asia from Europe had to pass through Cape Town. This brought the Dutch people who were the first white settlers; they developed their own culture, traditions and language (Afrikaans). The young Afrikaans in cape town still have a pretty thriving culture, many still go to Dutch reform church on Sundays and are very conservative. I'm living with an Afrikaans guy Neil, we actually met in Venezuela as Chris was travelling with him. He has a girlfriend that lives here too and culturally they are so much different to the white s.africans of English ancestry.

We live in a small flat in an area looking over Cape Town, the view is amazing, from the balcony we can see the ocean and from our bedroom window we see tabel mountain, right in front of the cable car. It's so nice and relaxing to be in a familiar home for the first time since September. Unpacking things, knowing your waking up in the same bed for more than 2 nights in a row, making your own food, just little things that make you feel like home as being on the road does take a tole on one, I wasn't enjoying things after a long time, it was just becoming ok so when do we have to move on to the next place feel. Saying that Chris and I have not spent one weekend in Cape Town since we got here.

My 19th Birthday celebrations lasted longer than a day as usual. Chris took me to Cape Point, a famous point where loads of ships were shipwrecked due to the harsh sailing conditions and where they say the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean meets, but if you look on a map you'll find its Cape Agulas where they meet. We then took a stop at an ostrich farm as there are hundreds around the Western Cape and saw the baby ostriches, we took an amazing drive along the coast and saw some beautiful beaches and watched the sunset on Signal Hill, a hill where a cannon was fired each time to ship came in to alert farmers to bring their fresh produce to sell to them, even now a cannon is fired every day at noon to commemorate this tradition. We ended my birthday by eating dinner at a 5*hotel voted one of the best hotels in the world, was called the 12 apostles after 12 rock outcrops on the Atlantic seaboard of table mountain. The next day we were off to a festival in the wine growing region, it was a beautiful venue set in a pear orchard, was a really cool weekend of dancing, partying and getting to know Chris' friends, was so strange to think that while everyone was partying in a pear orchard there are children starving living in shacks down the road, this has to the country of biggest contrasts and poverty gaps.

After a fun weekend in the sun we were off on the garden route doing deliveries as Chris delivers golfing magazines to gold clubs around the country. The resorts we saw were amazing, huge fancy gold courses with plush club houses, swimming pools and fancy restaurants. We've taken to using the bathrooms to steal shampoo and soap, in one we even snuck into the pool and then had showers and I got to use bathrobes and drive my hair with a hair dryer for the first time since travelling. South Africa must have the most beautiful landscapes and scenery; there are so many mountain passes to drive through, coastal rides and country roads. The 3 day road trip Chris goes on every month doing deliveries encompasses over 20 golf resorts along the eastern cape from cape town to Plettenberg Bay about 1200km there and back so were on the road for hours and hours each day but the scenery you see each time is well worth it, Chris has done it every month for 6 years and he's still no bored of it.

The other route he does is on the West Coast and is only a day trip of about 12 hours, the western cape isn't all that pretty, it's a lot drier and baron than other parts of south Africa I've seen, we drove through a national park along a estuary that looked like the Teign estuary but with white sand instead of black river mud and turquoise water instead of murky water....quite a big difference! We did this trip again last weekend but went with Chris friend Justin who took us out sailing in Saldahna Bay with 2 of his friends that he knows from the yacht club, middle aged south African/English couple and their friends a Chinese/south African couple! It was freezing cold and windy but we saw a lot of penguins, birds and dolphins and I went fishing for the first time too! It was a really great day.

We also went on a mission to a national park called the Twanka Karoo with Justin in his bakkie (Afrikaans for truck) that was an amazing experience. The Karoo is this dry, arid, desolate place with absolutely nothing around for miles. We had to take 2 tents to sleep in (one in a big one), 2 Jeri cans of extra petrol, and lots of water, lots of food and lots of warm clothes. We left the last sight of civilization at the town of Ceres and drove for 3 hours in the wilderness before setting up camp, so here we were 3 people in a desert of nothingness on the way up we passed no car, saw no other person, just NOTHING! and people say I like in the middle of nowhere in Bovey...I have never been so the middle of nowhere, the feeling of being totally isolated and cut off from the outside world was amazing. The next day we drove all around the park for hours and hours, spotting foxes, hairs, falcons, climbing in Bushmen caves, chasing the perfect rainbows around the park and driving over numerous mountain passes. The most memorable thing that happened was when a herd of 15 springbok leaped out of nowhere, Justin nearly lost control of the car but they all escaped unhurt, but it was so strange that we had all been really trying to spot animals and these things just came running so fast we couldn't even see them. Thankfully Justin is an excellent fire maker and does a really great braii (south African bbq---HUGE part of social gatherings and the culture) we had boerwors --south African hotdogs and wrapped huge amounts of sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, mushroom, onion, butternut in a huge foil wrap, put in at the bottom of the fire, let it cook and the veggies came out delicious. That night was unbelievably cold, even with blankets, 2 pairs of pants, boots, jackets and 2 tents. The next morning we decided to head back to civilization as we went through our spare tire already and didn't want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere for a loooong time. So we stopped for lunch in a dry river bed and as we were heading out we got stuck right in the middle of it! Oh dear deep deep sand and in a huge hole. So I watched the boys dig a huge hole for an hour while drinking a beer, reading a Cosmo and a sunbathing in my bikini waiting for a truck to drive by and wow there was one…a bug truck that could have pulled off out but drove straight past the English girl waving her hands frantically in the air on the side of the dirt road standing in a bikini…apparently in south Africa you can't stop for ANYBODY! haha so I came to the rescue and told the guys why we pick the truck up and move it out of the hole, by this time, they unloaded everything in it so it was pretty easy and we were out of there in about 5 minutes! The drive home was over 3 more mountain passes and into Ceres, we stopped for dinner on the side of the road and a car rocked up and 3 huge guys got out and I suspected there could be some trouble, but no one came out with a car and they all started jamming to Afrikaans folk songs in the moonlight, singing, drinking and dancing! It was a really great way to end and venturing off into the Karoo was probably one of the best times of my trip.

Last week was pretty awesome because Jen (the girl on my South America GAP trip) had just finished a 6 week overland trip through Africa and was staying in Cape Town before heading to India. It was amazing seeing her and she couldn't believe we were half way across the world again! Who would have ever imagined… Chris, Jen and I travelling through South America and meeting again at the bottom of Africa. Chris and I had to do out Garden Route road trip for deliveries again but instead of staying at backpackers we were staying at a holiday home in a place called Still Baii where Chris' friends had rented a holiday house for the long weekend, it was really lovely, right on the beach, you roll out of bed and step onto the sand right outside the door. So that was another really great time meeting some more of Chris' friends, these were his oldest friends from Durbanville where his mom lives. It's a small town in the wine region on the outskirts of Cape Town and is really beautiful, I always love that drive when we visit his ma. So that's about it, this is the first time I've updated my blog since I left South America so I hope I've filled in some of the blanks! Mary I'll work on putting pictures up ok. As most of you know my plans for the rest of the year have turned upside down after falling in love with Chris so here's an update for you guys. Im leaving in 2 weeks to go to Mexico to see Kathy's family, spending 3 weeks in California visiting Grampa which im really looking forward to, then meeting Chris and travelling in South East Asia for 6 weeks and in one of those weeks we will visit Natalie in Bali. Then I'm coming back to cape town to be with Chris until I have to start university in September, so I'll keep you updated asap.