Update from Cape Town before hitting the road

Hello from South Africa!

Brian and I have hit the road, honeymooning in Africa for 3 1/2 months. We've been here for 1 1/2 weeks so far, and are really enjoying it. Right now we're in Cape Town, just having joined our Drifters tour group with whom we spend the next 24 days traveling up thru Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Here's a quick synopsis of our top 10 experiences thus far:

10) Singapore Airlines - who knew a 30 hour plane ride could be enjoyable? At least we caught up on our sleep and movies!
9) Hiking in South Africa's Drakensburg mountains and going into northern Lesotho, hanging out with the spiritual healer, looking at very old bushmen (San people) rock art paintings, and drinking pineapple beer.
8) Sharing a bottle of wine with an Australian couple who travelled for 9 months by motorbike, from London to Cape Town - thru West Africa. I feel very unadventurous! Crazy stories.
7) Riding in the back of a police car. Umm, well the police offered to drive us to our hostel from the train station, honest! They were bored? Who said there's a lot of crime in South Africa? These particular police officers usually work in the townships where there's a lot of gang/drug
violence going on. They were just in town in case the protests during the strike got violent.
6) The tourist stuff - visited Robben Island (Mandela's cell was under renovation so we couldn't see it unfortunately), hiked around Table mountain and the Cape Point, etc. We also sat with an American girl for a while at our hostel in Joburg and had a history lesson - she's doing her Phd on South African history. Looking forward to going to the Apartheid Museum in Joburg next month, as well as touring around the Soweto townships.
5) Wine tasting and eating tons of gourmet food/cheese in Franschhoek, in the wine region near Cape Town. Food is soo cheap here - and the wine is quite tasty. The one vineyard gave us a free bottle of pinot noir bubbly to celebrate our honeymoon.
4) Traveling by train for 26 hours from Joburg to Cape Town - drinking a bottle of wine, being waited on, traveling in style! Never mind there was no heat on the train whatsoever, and I had to sleep with my touque on, buried in my sleeping bag. It is winter here! Looking forward to warm Namibian desert weather.
3) Having pints in the pub watching the Tri Nation rugby games. Had to cheer softly when the All Blacks beat South Africa.
2) Penguins, African penguins, tons of them! Need I say more? Wow they're cute. While we haven't gone to any game reserves yet, so far we've seen zebras, lots of baboons who walk right up to you, a huge ostrich, boks (antelopes), dassies, and I'm sure lots more.
1) And of course spending time with my new hubbie - and glad that we're no longer driving around the country! We would definitely be the couple arguing incessantly over directions on the Amazing race tv show!

Hope all is well. We miss you, but not too much :) Send me updates - love to hear what's happening. We'll be camping for the next week up thru Western South Africa, and canoeing in Namibia, supposedly camping tentless in the wild. So I'm assuming we won't have internet access for a bit!
-Anne

South African adventures

Can't believe we've already been here for a week! We're busting a move around the country trying to see things before we start our overland tour up to Namibia. There's a ton to do and see in South AFrica - we really don't have enough time. But we spent 4 days in the Drakensburg mountains, which was great. One of those days we went on a day tour to the country of Lesotho - the name of the country meaning "high up". It's way up in the mountains, and is much more "traditional". We met a sangoman (traditional healer), saw some ancient rock art from the Sans people, tried pineapple beer, and just took in the sights. Very interesting seeing how they live. The school teacher there gave us the tour for much of the day since school was out for the winter. Some of the kids have to walk for an hour and a half to get to school, so they shut it when it's cold.

Our tour guide that evening then got very drunk at the hostel and gave us more insights into the African culture - very enlightening!

Hikes etc in the Drakensburgs

The Amphitheatre hike was amazing on Thursday. We cheated by taking a minibus up Sentinel peak on the North side of it to around 2500 m. The road was quite rough and I'm not sure how it actually got up there with 16 of us crammed in. The bus really isn't that hard core with the road quite steep and bumpy. At the start the wind was howling and clouds were peeling off the peak. Good so it would clear up for us but the wind chill was crazy. I think it must have been -5 because the wind was at least 60 kph and the temp was 6C. And I wasn't going to bring my gore-tex. Anyhow - made it up the gorge to 3150m., saw the world's 4th highest waterfall, descended some crazy ladders, and back to the lodge. Not a bad day in the office.
-Brian

S.A. at last!

Hey there!

We made it to the Drakensburg mountains in South Africa! Took quite a while
to get here, but singapore airlines was amazing - no complaints. Got caught
up on all the recent movies. The strike in SA didn't impact the airport at
all. We were thru immigration in record time. We were worried that we'd
have to go downtown in joburg to pay for our train that we're taking to cape
town next week, but when we called they said we could pay the day of - a
relief since the train station isn't the safest place to hang out, and there
were major demonstrations in joburg and cape town yesterday. We were
following it on the news yesterday and it sounded peaceful. So, we picked
up our car and drove 4 hours to the mountains. We're staying at a
backpackers in our deluxe double room with a beautiful view of the mountains
and our own bathroom! Pure luxury :)

Going on a trip this morning to the Amphtheatre - a hike in the mountains.
HAve to go down a bunch of chain ladders hooked up to ropes, should be
interesting. Then going to Lesotho tomorrow where we go into villages and
mix with the locals.
-Anne

Honeymoon has begun

Anne and I are now in Singapore! We left yesterday - actually two 'days' ago, but have only been traveling for 20 hours and crossed the Int'l Date line. Today (June 13) is our 4 year anniversary of meeting at Michelle Bergerin's house warming party and it's been 2 months since our wedding. Appropriate that we land in Africa in 12 hours on this day too. Thanks to Anke for making sure we got to the airport on time. It was a bit of work getting our huge boxes put together and shipped to Singapore - our final destination of this leg. That's where the job search begins! Anyhow, for now, we travel the dark continent; exploring, meeting new people, experiencing different cultures, and seeing all the wildlife! Will try to keep updating regularly as we go. Ta ta for now, Brian and Anne.