Almost on safari....

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Hi Guys

Firstly, thanks to everyone who has mailed since our last blog. Sorry we haven't had a chance to reply individually, hopefully we'll get more opportunity when we get to Oz.

Quick update on the KPI's!!!

Finances = Green (ish)
Fitness = Amber (still)
Relationship = Green
Arguments = Zero

We left Cape Town last Thursday. Unfortunately we didn't make it up the mountain as there was just too much cloud. So we now have a reason to return at a later date! And since we have been travelling around we have both decided we want to come back to South Africa. It is a beautiful country, people are so friendly and the scenery is stunning. And they have a very large wine region! We discovered this when we stayed in Franschhoek and went wine tasting at various vineyards. The wine was very tasty - we even managed to come away with a bottle or two to drink at our leisure!! Franschhoek is the wine and food capital of South Africa. If ever we emigrate, we think it will be here!!!

The other point of note in Franschhoek was that the guesthouse had a decent hairdryer. After a week in Cape Town with a pathetic, useless thing, it was lovely to be able to dry my hair properly. I know what's important in life!!!!

From Franschhoek we moved on to Outdshoorn which is ostrich country. We learnt lots of fact to amaze you all with such as 97% of the world's population of ostriches come from this region and an ostrich egg can withstand the weight of a human adult. An ostrich egg can also feed up to 20 people - although that number is obviously reduced if Mark is eating as well!!! We didn't try the eggs but we did eat the ostrich steaks which are very tasty.

There are a lot of mountains on the garden route and we have had to drive through a lot of passes. The most spectacular of them all was the Swartberg pass which is 1585m above sea level and only accessible from a narrow, gravel road. Fortunately the Corsa made it to the top (and back again!).

So now we're in Knysna for a few days and we have just booked to go mountain biking. We are both having withdrawal symptoms as we haven't been on our bikes so decided it was high time we did. And tomorrow we're trying to get canoeing on Knysna lagoon but we haven't arranged that yet. We're staying in a guesthouse where the owner is an eccentric artist and her housekeeper is the King of Lesotho's granddaughter. It's all a bit surreal!!!

We're getting towards the end of our South Africa leg of the tour now. It's off to Shamwari on Wednesday for safari and then we fly to Perth on Saturday. Neither of us can believe how quickly the time is going here but we are having so much fun and really enjoying ourselves.

Hope all is well with everyone, will be in touch again when we get to Oz.

Love K&M

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