PHIL: Phew, we're here! Sorry it has taken this long to post anything on here but there hasn't been much to say up until now really. Firstly though, the flight was ace!! I've never been on a long haul flight before and I was a right giddy kipper getting on that plane and seeing the tvs in the back of the seats in front and the goodey bags you get, and the bar....woohoo!! We could choose to watch whatever films we personally wanted - and they were up to date too! I watched Knocked Up and Superbad and a bit of Die Hard 4 but my eyes finally gave in...We took advantage of the food and drink (obviously!) but not as much as we could have I don't think so we will make up for that on our return flight in a year's time!

The best bit about the flight was this though...I was watching a film and the air hostess came down and looked at me and then said something to Mark and he pointed at me. I saw her duty free bag and assumed she was asking who had ordered something so I just said "No, not me" and carried on watching the film. But Mark carried on pointing at me and gesturing for me to take off my headset and listen so I took them off and said "what's up??". The air hostess said "Are you Philippa McGreal?"........"Urm...yes" and so she started handing me a card and saying something...I glanced at the card and saw the names 'Beth, Banks, Hollie, Suggs and Teresa' at the end and realised my friends had done something and burst into tears!! What a fool! The air hostess handed me a bottle of Moet and I read the card from them - she said she'd brought it down earlier and was going to serve it but I was asleep so she'd wrapped it up and I could take it with me. I was gobsmacked!! It was the best thing anyone's ever done for me - none of us could believe it! So thanks girls - you finally cracked me and made me cry after all your trying - too bad you weren't there to witness it though ha ha!! It was so overwhelming though - I felt very important as everyone was looking at me to see what I'd got!! We saved the champagne for Nathan's birthday celebrations...

We were a bit delayed setting off so we arrived in South Africa at about 11.15am their time Thursday morning (it is two hours ahead here) and jumped in the first taxi we found to get to our hostel. (By the way those backpacks are HEAVY! - my neck and back were killing me before we even got to Heathrow). We found our hostel and realised why the reviews weren't too cracky - the woman on reception didn't even know where our building was and she tried to say we'd only paid the deposit when we had paid in full. When we finally got in our rooms I nearly vomited - we were so tired so just wanted to crash for a bit and yet the rooms were minging - especially the bathrooms and kitchen. The bathroom in our room has a door that doesn't close properly and has no lock anyway, the shower curtain doesn't cover anything so the place gets soaked and the window doesn't close so people can see you in the shower as they walk past. Also we found there's not enough water in that toilet to flush so if you flush it by accident it is trying to flush for hours! Hee hee the joys of backpacking hit us straight away.... :-)

The people staying in our hostel all seem very nice though - there's people from Sweden, Germany, Holland, South Africa, America... and our dorm is now full so that means there's 8 of us in our room. I took some photos of the bathroom and our dorm but they look really nice on the pictures!! This computer keeps crashing when I try to upload them though so I haven't been able to upload any yet and will have to when we get to a better internet place.

So far what have we done then......Well Thursday we had a wander round, the American dude told us where most things were - the launderette, the grocery store, the banks, how to get a taxi or bus and most importantly the restaurants and bars!! It is so cheap it's ridiculous - we have been drinking their lager 'Castle' and it's about 85p a bottle! Then there are 1litre mugs you can get which are 22 Rand (about 2 quid!) - it's great!! We have been eating out and paying about 3 quid for a big meal and drinks each!! We've bought alot of food in now though coz we can't be eating out all the time.

Friday we went 'downtown' to main Cape Town. We are staying in a suburb which is called Observatory which is the studenty part and then downtown is where it's all happening. We decided to get one of the minibus taxis as it's only 4 Rand which is only about 30p! They are very interesting to say the least!! It's just a loaf of bread on wheels with a man hanging out the window shouting and the driver beeping all the way, trying to get people in! When it stops you realise there's not enough room for you to fit in but they make sure you fit somehow anyway! Nathan had to practically sit on someone's knee on the first journey, with 4 people crammed on to two seats. It's hilarious! - definitely part of the experience! Downtown is cool - there's a massive market with loads going on, a big shopping mall, loads and loads of hostels and restaurants and bars and cafes.... there's just hustle bustle everywhere. We had a wander round here, had something to eat, bought an adaptor (I have a worldwide adaptor and the only country it doesn't do is South Africa I realised!!)... Friday night when we returned from downtown and had a kip we went out..had a meal and beers and went to a place called Stones. It's like a student union there and is full of pool tables. All the students hang out there so it's a cool place to meet people and just have a laugh.

Saturday it was Nathan's birthday!! 24!! I wish I could point you towards the photos but I can't yet...But anyway, he opened his presents and we went for a big fat fry-up at one of the bars - the full works with toast and tea or coffee for 15 Rand!! (less than 1 pound 50!) (There's no pound sign on this keyboard by the way). Then we headed down to the train station which is just at the bottom of our street and got a ticket to Muizenberg - she automatically gave us First Class, known here as Metro Plus and at first we were like 'we don't want first class, we just want the cheapest', but then realised the difference is about 15p so we just kept those tickets and went to wait for the train....When it arrived we were so glad she'd given us Metro Plus - on the carriages it says either Metro or Metro Plus and the Metro ones were absolutley crammed full and hardly any windows...whereas the Metro Plus; loads of windows, big seats, not crammed, very airy....beautiful! It took about 30 minutes to get to Muizenberg where the beach was - it was really really windy so there were tons of surfers out hitting the waves. It was lovely white sands behind the main bit of the beach but because the main beach was so busy and so windy it seemed to have dragged in all the sand a nd seaweed so the water was pretty horrible. Instead we walked along the prom and went for a game of Crazy Golf!! Woohoo! It was well funny - especially seeing how terrible Mark was! He got so annoyed he was throwing his towel, his club and then eventually the golf ball itself!! It was funny! After a couple of hours we went back and went for a meal for Nathan's birthday - we've found a place called Babbo that does really nice food, it's cooked really well and nicely presented and it's still cheap so it's great! Then we went back to the hostel and got ready for the night out - we'd bought a massive cake for Nath at the local Spar so when we'd all got ready we had cake and Champagne! I poured a bit out for all the others staying in the hostel and offered it round (much to the boys disagreements!) and we all toasted Nath in the kitchen and then headed out. That was a night to remember...which I pretty much don't! Yesterday I spent pretty much all day in bed poorly - so therefore a good night methinks! It was a good icebreaker anyway as we got to speak to all the others staying in the hostel as they came out with us.

So today is Monday...yesterday as I said I was poorly so I left the lads to go and watch the football, which I think they ended up being pretty disappointed with. Today we're downtown and we're going to go to the Tourist Info place to find out about trips so we have some plans - we can't wait to go to Robben Island and to the Penguin colony!! - and then hopefully our photos will start getting interesting too. Tonight is our last night in this hostel, Obs Student Lodge, but we're going to book a few more nights as it's so cheap (you're definitely getting your value for money though!!) as we still need to explore a lot more and I guess we're settled there so it's a good base.

Must dash anyway as I bet you're all asleep by now....next time I promise to have some good stories to tell you all. Hope you're all ok and missing us!! Keep sending emails and write on our message board xxxxxxx

PAUL: this won't be quite as long as phils cos i can never think of anything to say i jus kinda go along with things! anyways! phils jus tryin to upload fotos onto the blog but it don't seem to like her very much, she's been sat there for about an hour and a half n got 4 on so far, way to go!!

the plane journey was absolutely awesome, i loved it, as soon as i sat down i was pickin out the films i wanted to watch which i think may have got on marks nerves a bit as i was planning the whole flight out with different films and asking "is this one good, do u think i'll have time to watch this one as well, have u seen this one....and so on, which can get quite annoyin with over 30 different films. we started off with superbad and then i went on to the bourne ultimatum, then pirates of the caribbean, by half way through this most of the people on the plane were asleep but i had too many movies to watch, wen it was finished i then moved onto the simpsons movie which i missed the end of as i finally fell asleep! 'BAD TIMES' but wen i woke up it was time for breakfast 'GOOD TIMES' and after munching down all of wat they gave me it was back to watching another film so i decided to start watchin harry potter and the order of the phoenix! this then took me to the end of the journey!

i'm sure you've all read wat phil's put so i won't go over it again apart from jus clarify that mark is really bad at miniature golf and we do have the proof on the camera as he go's from one side of the hole to the other and back again jus following the ball!

on tuesday we went to the two oceans aquarium at the V&A waterfront which was spectacular.but will have to be saved for another day as this internet cafe is closing in 4 minutes EEK! speak to u all soon

watch this space!!

NATHAN: I wasn't sure how to get into the blogs bit at this stage so I wrote mine on the message board!! So check that out for my first blog and I promise all others I write will be on here - sorry for the confusion!