We've moved up to Springbok, the capital of Namaqualand, Northern Cape, South Africa. In Aug/Sept this place is a carpet of wild flowers, right now it is a very hot sandstone desert with it's own beauty, but not one we can explore in these temperatures! We may head to the coastal town of Alexander Bay, once a restricted diamond area, to see the birdlife at the Orange River estuary but right now we are staying close to flush toilets! Springbok is a stra...

Couple of pieces of advice about Lamberts Bay. First, if you want to take a photo of a gannet flying overhead it helps to have a free day, bags of patience, at least a 2GB memory card and no sense of smell (the latter because the guano generated by 23,000 fish eating gannets is a little intoxicating, nothing to do with Angela this time). Second, don't have the shrimp cocktail at Isabella's harbourside restaurant. Not being aware of the second piece of...

The Tulbagh and Cederberg regions will be in our memory for a long time, not least because of the heat!We now know exactly what it is like to rotated on a kebab (sosaties as the South Africans call them). 47C is hot by any standards and we have sweated from parts we never realised we had!In Tulbagh we visited Chris Eksteen, pastor of the Dutch Reformed Chuch, who we'd met in Kruger back in July, and had morning tea in the Pastory (probably no such word but it...

Cape Town Thank You We reluctantly departed Cape Town to head north to Namibia via the Cedarberg Mountains and Springbok. This is the route taken by thousands of tourists during the wild flower season, we are just 4 months late or 8 months early to see it but intend coming back. We also want to return to see the migrating Southern Right whales close inshore and to revisit Cape Town to see the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and the view from Table Mounta...

Cape Town Part Two “Smokey spice ushers in purple mulberry fruit, good grip keeps tie lines taught” Reading this hotel wine list description (it was a Shiraz by the way but you already knew that) reminds us, if we needed any reminder, that Cape Town is different to most places we’ve encountered on our trip to date! Heike & Clint’s house in Somerset West was perfectly placed to do some quick tours of the Stellenbosch & P...