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BLOG Week 5 & 6 - Sun, Sea and stunning scenery in Cape Town!
We have now spent two weeks in Cape Town and have totally fallen in love with it - shame we have to leave it in only two short weeks!
We have quite a lot to tell you all about as we are covering two weeks in one blog.....first a bit about how work is going. As a reminder, Jonny is spending his days in the Ophthalmology Department at Groote Schuur hospital, which is a public hospital and so serves the poorer communities in Cape Town, e.g. the townships of Kayelitsha and Guguletu. His days have been spent doing the early morning ward round (which means we both leave for work at 7am!) for in-patient eye surgery patients and then spending the rest of the day in the eye A&E seeing the results of various eye injuries (e.g. from glass bottles, screwdrivers, fists, work injuries etc.) and has been getting stuck-in as expected. Jonny's days in the team are a lot more relaxed here then his time in Bara Hospital in Jo'burg, as there is only so much you can do as a junior. The surgery in particular is very specialist and technical (and takes years of practice), however he is getting plenty of invaluable teaching and just experiencing life in this speciality.
Dipa has been loving her time at Wola Nani and been able to help out with different areas of the charity's work as well as learning to make a range of new crafts - she is definitely feeling inspired to branch out into different crafts when she gets home. She will now spend the next two weeks with another community charity called Monkeybiz which is also a craft-based charity but they focus on beaded crafts only. Now let us say a bit about what we've been doing apart from work to pass our time!
We have settled into our apartment in Muizenburg which is very relaxing and really close to the most amazing sandy beach which stretches unspoilt for miles and miles and is really quiet most of the time. Generally we have been finishing work between and 3-4pm, leaving us plenty of time for sight-seeing in the evenings, coastal drives around the peninsula or just walking along the beach in Muizenburg watching the surfers at Surfers' Corner. We really enjoyed the walk to Cape Point, the cliff-top drive around Chapman's peak and walking along the harbour at Kalk bay watching out for seals and Whales (and going to Kalkies fisherman's café for Jonny!!). The nice thing about the city is that it never feels too busy and you don't need to drive to far to get to places. There is also quite a strong "outdoors" lifestyle in Cape Town because of the proximity to the mountains and the sea which is nice and very infectious.
So far we have had two full weekends to explore the surrounding area. Last weekend we went to Hermanus (known as the whale-spotting mecca) with an old colleague of Dipa's from Towers Perrin (Ramona says 'Hi' to all the old TP gang), where we saw some whales very close up. At the moment it is the whale migration season along the coast so we will hopefully get to see many more while we are here. We also explored downtown Cape Town (which has lots of beautiful old Cape Dutch architecture, museums, craft markets and gardens) and the Bo Kaap region (which is where the Cape Malay population were traditionally based formed of freed slaves from countries around the indian ocean). The second weekend we went out to stay in the Cape Winelands (Stellenbosch, Paarl, Franschoek) for two nights. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel surrounded by vineyards which was an impressive view every morning and passed the weekend fitting in many vineyard visits and wine tastings! The wine region boasts amazing mountainous scenery and we took some very nice drives between areas. Each of vineyards we visited were very unique (in terms of the wines they produced, their history, the setting) and some produced other things apart from wine (including cheese, olive oil, chocolate) which made the visits even more interesting. We also did a nature walk on Saturday morning at the Vergelegen Vine Estate (the Anglo American owned vineyard) with a conservationist who took us into the hills on the estate and taught us about the very specific flora and fauna of the cape region which come into bloom around now (as we are going into spring) which us really pretty.
In true English style lets talk about the weather for a few minutes....due to the mixture of influences on the weather from the sea and the mountains being in such close proximity here in Cape Town and also the fact that we are in spring, the weather has been quite mixed (you could spend the entire day just watching the sky here which changes every 5 minutes!). The locals here were right when they said you can experience all 4 seasons in one days and also when they said don't bother to look at the weather forecast because it's not going to be right! Out of the 2 weeks we have been here there have only been a few days when the weather has been too bad for going out. At the weekends we have enjoyed really hot weather and sunny skies which is the most important. Not too bad remembering that it's actually winter here!
Last thing on the agenda for the blog this week is Jonny's Animal of the Week (which covers weeks 5&6!) - the Whale, an amazing animal to see in its natural habitat as you can not get over its size and also its chosen in dedication to Dipa's mum as this is one of her favourite animals which she herself saw in Hermanus a few year ago.
We have now completed over half of our time in South Africa and it seems that time is fast-forwarding ahead - we can not believe it is September already!
We hope you are all well and a special happy birthday message for Claire Rigby this week.
Jonny and Dipa xx
- comments
Rachel Madriaga Trip of a lifetime by the look of it Glad you're seeing and doing so much.