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