Goodbye to Uganda, hello to safari...

Well it was with heavy hearts that we said goodbye to the babies and our friends in Kampala a few weeks ago. We had the best time and are all talking about the date for our return trip. Our time at the babies home was amazing, we instantly fell in love with all the babies there and with the kids at Peace for Children Africa (formerly Voice of Hope). Our time with the babies and kids had a profound effect on all three of us and we definitely look at life differently now - no more complaining about trivial things anymore, we really are fortunate.

We left Uganda and headed to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe to start our three week safari. We had a couple of days in Vic Falls before the safari started which we made the most of by going white water rafting (again!) on the Zambezi river and doing a canoe session where we didn't actually canoe but sat in the canoe drinking wine while someone else paddled for us (pretty slack, but great fun!). Fortunately we didn't get to drunk and fall out into the Hippo and Croc invested water :-).

Our safari was an absolute blast and we spent three weeks travelling around Africa with a great bunch of people. We were very lucky to get a great group of people on our tour and we are still catching up in Cape Town while everyone is still around so I guess that says something about how well we all got along.

Setting up the tents and pulling them down got a little tedious but fortunately the guys did the most of the work for us most days - thanks guys :-) !! The countries we visited were Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The three weeks rushed by in a blur and we were all pretty surprised how quickly the time flew when we arrived in Cape Town a couple of days ago. Some of the highlights were the animals that we got to see, quad biking on the dunes of the Namibian desert, the Dolphin tour we did, climbing a huge sand dune to watch the sunrise, watching a sunset from a mountain in a bush camp, visiting the worlds second largest canyon (Fish River Canyon) and generally spending lazy afternoons getting thrown into various swimming pools at different campsites.

We are now spending a few days in Cape Town before we leave Africa to head to Peru. We are all very depressed that our time in Africa has come to an end and we are busy planning when our return trip will be. Today we climbed to the top of Table Mountain which was pretty amazing. We weren't really prepared for the trek, thinking that it would just be a leisurely stroll to the top - not expecting it to be an almost horizontal climb over big rocks which took us almost two hours and pushed us to the verge of vomitting. Kate's idea of doing the trek in thongs was quickly squashed and it was fortunate that she had decided to change into her walking shoes before we left :-)

Yesterday we visited Robben Island which is the island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years. It was interesting to see the conditions that the prisoners were held under, and it does a great job of educating people about the apartheid regime.

Tomorrow we are heading to the Stellenbosch district to do some wine tasting (because we haven't quite drunk enough wine over these past few weeks!). We will be uploading some photos shortly - look out for Kate in her stylish $3 sunnies that she picked up in Botswana - very stylish Kate!!

Until next time, take care
Jac, Kate and Kath
xxx

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