SA tour 2010 Part 1: Cape Town (Day 1-4: May11-May14)

Welcome to South Africa! After over a year of planning, saving and anticipating, this moment finally arrived. I was literally jumping for joy with tears in my eyes as I greeted my most special people. They traveled almost 40 hours, and look at how great they look! We stood around with our bags right here and talked about the flight, and our trip to come. We checked into our next flight into Cape Town, and then we sat at Spur (South Africa's version of the Texas Roadhouse) and had our first brewskie!


We arrived at 11:30pm into Cape Town. This was our beautiful 5 star bed and breakfast. 27 on First in Camps Bay. This was our private patio, and there was a huge living room and kitchen right inside. The beach was a 2 minute walk from here. We quickly learned that 'winter' in Cape Town means a lot of rain... but our first morning here, jet lag and all, we managed to hike up Lions Head Mountain to take advantage of a moment of clear skies.

This is a photo of Lions Head taken from our balcony. I love this hike so much because you walk around the mountain as you climb, so you get the full 360 degree view of Cape Town. It's also a quick fix for jet lag to get that blood moving!

We loved taking our peeps to our favorite spots including this one!!

Ginger and Em about half way up. What an amazing view!

We are getting close to the top now. This is where it gets really rocky.

So we chose the more challenging route and this is where you have to climb the 15 foot rock wall with just a chain for balance. This is Riko attempting her first step.

Ginge was doing great- until she looked down!!! She got a little scared on this technical part, but Gregg was right there to give her the boost she needed to make it up.

Well you have to do the Ben Becker pose even in South Africa

Me and Mama Ger. It was so cool to have here with us in SA.

Becky and Ginge

Taking a rest on the hike. In total it took us about 3 hours. But the weather was great and we were able to see Cape Town from the birds eye view. Robben Island was especially cool to see.

Mariko, Ginge, Becky, Ken, Zac, me and Gregg.

The Cape Town Waterfront. We came down here for a fancy dinner as well as to check out some shopping shopping. It was a little cold, but still very beautiful.

Dinner at the Waterfront. Carl and Vivian joined us.

Petting the cheetahs! This is Spier Wine Estate's Cheetah Conservation project. This cheetah was anxiously awaiting dinner time so we only got a quick minute with him. I'm pretty sure he had his sights set on Mariko. When she went into pet him he kept jumping up to see her. It was pretty funny. Getting this close to these cats always makes your heart beat a little bit faster...

This is our 'cultural' night at Spier Wine Estate. This restaurant is called Moyo. It's very festive because they come around and paint your face and then sing and dance for you. They serve a buffet dinner of just about anything you can imagine. Springbok, or gemsbok potjiekos, (like a dutch oven stew), seafood, beef and chicken, all kinds of South African specialities. The funniest part of the night was when Mariko when to get some dessert and she chose a pear with an interesting sauce on it. She took a bite and looked up at everyone and said... "humm, this pear tastes funny." Gregg replied "maybe because it's soaked in brandy!" It was classic! Check out Greggs warrior face painting. And Kate joined us for dinner! It was really fun to see her again. We drank lots of wine (well, wine estate... come on!) and enjoyed our dinner very much.


Becky, Riko, Zac and Ginge at our dinner at Moyo. Cool African face painting!!

They did the Soccer World Cup Diski Dance, so Mariko, Kate and I decided to jump up there and give it a try. We really sucked compared to these dancers. Talk about lack of rhythm!

And this concludes our Cape Town segment of the tour. We flew the morning of the 14th to Durban. Due to flight delays, we only landed in Durbs late afternoon but you better believe Johnny Brogan was there to pick us up with our trailer and all. We stopped at Balito to do a power grocery shop and then headed out for Craig's family farm in Empangeni. (Say that 10 times fast...)