South Africa
Hoezit? (South African greeting)
We arrived in Jo'burg and drove south west for two days to Wilderness, where we plan to spend most of the next 3 months. We have sorted out a means of transport (a hire car seemed the best option), and communication (a mobile phone), and are well and truly feeling at home. Here is a picture of where we are staying and our hire car:
We have the whole place to ourselves at the moment. We have been starting the day with a short run, and then having breakfast on the balcony, looking out to sea. The dolphins are keeping us entertained. We often see them jump right out of the water as they surf the waves. After breakfast we then think about flying, and head out if it is looking flyable (nearly every day so far). Here are a couple of photos we took while we have been flying:
We have also joined the local running club (Sedgefield Striders). They meet for 5km time trial each Wednesday. The next picture is where the running club meets (note, a pub!).
The African kids you see in the photo also run with us barefoot! Some of the young back kids (7/8 year olds) run a sub 20 minute 5 km. We stay for a beer or two afterwards (it would be rude not to!) and sit outside in the setting sun. Here are a couple of photos from the club's fancy dress Christmas Braai (the African for BBQ) last week.
We have even run a couple of local half marathons. They have started at 7am (to avoid the heat). They have both been very hilly, but very scenic. Here is a photo taken during one of the races. It shows most of Wilderness, which is where we are staying.
We are enjoying the cheap cost of living here. A good wine is costing us just over a pound. To buy two beers in a pub is less than £1. The weather is fantastic too. After a day of flying we are enjoying a beer, watching the sun go down.
We've also completed a scuba diving course while we have been here. We now have a licence to dive by ourselves anywhere in the world. The course consisted of lots of theory, an exam, then two pool sessions and 4 sea dives, which meant a 4am start one day and 5am the next. We dived at Knysna Heads at the Paquita Wreck and got to see lots of colourful fish and corral. We also saw a puff adder shark. Here is a picture of us having breakfast after one of our dives.
We have just been to Porterville for a couple of days to watch the African Open Paragliding Championships. Below are a couple of photos from the competition. We flew before the competition take off window. Even taking off at 10.30am we managed to get 18km cross-country.
John and Alex came out to join us for Xmas and New Year. The picture below is from our Christmas day Braai (BBQ).
We all did some canoeing, hiking, swimming in the sea and abseiling around Wilderness and then went to Stellenbosch to do some wine tasting on bikes. The picture below was at the Delaire wine estate, sampling the wine
We spent New Year at the Waterfront in Cape Town. We walked up Table Mountain on New Year's Day. Here is a picture of us at the top.
Hamba Kahle.