Hi all,

We have arrived safely in Jo'burg.

Picking up and driving Jonny's hire car from the airport to Parkhurst (where we are staying) after little or no sleep on the overnight flight was fun.....let's just say we saw more of downtown Johannesburg than we needed to on the first day! You will see attached a picture of the amazing hire car we both have got for the next month - the Chevrolet Spark with it's lack of power steering and air conditioning can not be described as a sports car - but the upside is that we are in no fear of being car-jacked for it!

The studio cottage we are staying in is in a relatively affluent and pretty safe part of Jo'burg - the cottage is owned by Josie and Dave Adler who are the kindest and friendliest people we could have hope to meet here. Josie greeted us with a cup of tea and biscuits as soon as we arrived and I knew we were going to like her!

Our cottage is really cosy and Josie has made sure we have everything we need, which includes a plug-in radiator which is essential in the current winter climate as its quite cold in the evenings, overnight and early morning. During the day we have enjoyed lovely bright sunshine and temperatures have got up to around 20 degrees - basically a perfect English summer day!

We have spent the first couple of days getting used to driving around, being careful with our security and exploring our local area (shops etc) -Josie took us out on a couple of driving test runs yesterday to get to our respective places of work which are pretty straight-forward....can not believe we both start tomorrow! We have been to Sandton which is the commercial hub of Jo'burg and has an amazing square in the middle - Nelson Mandela Square - which has lots of nice restaurants and bars. We have also explored our local area Parkhurt which has a brilliant street of cafes, shops, bars and restaurants within walking distance of the cottage - it is safe to walk around the local areas during the daytime or definately not at night. We met my friend Humbu from Anglo American for dinner last night locally and had a really nice italian meal, for all you veggies I had a really nice starter of stuffed artichokes with feta, basil and tomato sauce which was amazing.

Jo'jurg is a relatively green city with lots of small parks and full of trees, its also quite hilly and so you get amazing views of the whole city as you drive around.
Today we are going to walk to the Rosebank area closeby where there is a craft market today at the mall, its going to be hard to abstain from buying things but I have to be strong as we have only just arrived!

Hope you are all well and a special birthday message for our nephew Roshan who is celebrating his first birthday today!

Love lots,
Dipa and Jonny x