African Sunshine

After a fabulous Club World experience on BA's 747 upper deck, with champagne and fully reclinable seats, we touched down in sunny Cape Town on the morning before xmas. From there we took a hire car along the quieter inland route to George, through the Du Toitskloof mountain Huguenot Tunnel to Worcester, Robertson and south to Swellendam, arriving at my folks early afternoon.
Xmas, my birthday and New Year flew by in a blur, visiting cousins, aunts and uncles on both sides of the family.

Almost everyday turned into a gorgeous sunny beach day with red wine sunsets on the front balcony.
We braaied many evenings and indulged in too much chocolate and cake, having to walk, run and cycle off the excess calories almost every day.

This picture was taken xmas eve while Dad braaied sirloin steak, the day we arrived. On other days William and I made fresh pasta, warm tagliatelle salad with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella and butternut and sage stuffed raviolli.
On New Years Eve the De Beers joined us for snacks and at midnight we got silly with Dom Pedros and a wicked chocolate cake from Christine!

On our last Monday, Dad drove us all to Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary and Birds of Eden - the largest free flight bird aviary in the world - near Plett. We saw many Lemurs, Tamarins and both a Howler and Spectacle monkey.
In the aviary we saw some local birds including Louries as well as exotic birds and waterfowl.
The above picture was taken at the Wilderness on the way back, enjoying a Foresters! While travelling back to CT to see Nix, Chris and D, William and I detoured almost 450km to Sutherland to visit SALT (the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere - and equal in size to the largest in the world).

We stayed over night at Kambru-Kind Guest House and had a fabulous dinner at Cluster d'Hote. Although the afternoon was cloudy, the evening cleared by about 9pm and we were lucky to use one of the telescopes at Sutherland to see the brilliant Sirius star cluster (Canis Major) and the spider like nebulae of Pleiadies and Orion.

The next day we drove a further 400km to CT through the dry Great Karoo and lush Hex River Valley.

This is Will at Wafu where we had sunset cocktails in the wind :) It was really great to see my mates again and we had 2 wonderful home cooked dinners with bubbles and red wine.But the time went too quickly and now I am back in cold London, missing them already, and the African sunshine !