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Richard here.
The last week and a bit has been fairly busy but very relaxing. Compared to the rest of Africa, South Africa is very developed and very easy to travel round! We have been driving from place to place, enjoying great weather, beautiful scenery, and fun activities. This blog is going to be fairly tame in comparison to some of the others.
After leaving Cape Town, we drove south down the Cape Peninsular. We saw a load of penguins (which Nic loved and even I admit were fairly entertaining), and found the point where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet (which I maintain is a completely arbitrary point and it is very silly to attach significance to). We also met up with Nurit, a friend of ours from Israel (I first met her while travelling several years ago in Laos, and we have since enjoyed trips to each other's home countries).
We then started making our way east along the bottom of Africa. First stop was Hermanus, where we went "diving with great white sharks". This was alright but not incredible, for a number of reasons: 1) it was warmer than the seal diving, but still very cold 2) it wasn't really diving, just putting your head underwater and holding your breath, since you are confined to the cage 3) only the juvenile sharks are attracted to the smells on the surface. The monster sharks keep their distance 4) visibility was terrible. Nevertheless, we got a great view of some nasty looking sharks and ticked it off the bucket list. We also saw lots of whales from the cliff side path just outside of town.
We are now on the Garden Route, an area on the coast with lush green valleys, great beaches, and lots of backpackers. This feels a little bit like backpacker's Disneyland - plenty of fun to be had and money to be spent, although less in the way of adventure. We have seen a load of wild meerkats, visited huge bird, monkey and snake sanctuaries, went to an ostrich farm, and even visited a puzzle park (yes, we are geeks).
The hostels round here are excellent, very cheap and mostly extremely well run. We have stayed at some quite memorable places, for example where we are now is a bit of a hippy enclave, and we look forward to taking part in the drum circle session planned for tomorrow night (for those who have seen the 2nd Inbetweeners film, we expect it to be very spiritual). We have also met some 'interesting' people, notably some slightly crazy Afrikaans military officers, who were keen to impress us around the braai (African BBQ) through the eating of raw ostrich, drinking of fine vintage brandy mixed with red bull, and production of casual racism.
We have had the honour of being here during the conclusion of the Oscar Pistorius trial. This has been massive over here, with an actual entire tv channel dedicated to the case. It has always been the first thing mentioned in radio news reports, normally followed by a summary of the number of murders that occurred in the area the previous night (usually around 3-4). The general feeling locally is that he got off very lightly.
Tomorrow we are off to see a load of big cats (which Nic is very excited about), and then we will be driving further east towards Mozambique. We only have three weeks left in Africa, and the time seems to be passing faster and faster!
(Note, this was written a day or so before we actually got to upload it!)
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