Cape Town & good bye Africa

After three months of excessive eating, drinking and putting over a stone (!) on, I have no idea why Anwen and I thought it would be a good idea to drag ourselves up and down Table Mountain in an afternoon.
(It's so depressing to think how many spin classes I'll have to endure get rid of it all - but at least I had a hell of a lot of fun collecting every single one of those 14 extra pounds!)

Anyway, our little mountain jaunt was an utterly ridiculous idea which resulted in three days of me walking the streets of Cape Town like an old nanna. Even the weirdos of our group (the ones that get up at 6am to go for a run and contort their bodies into all sorts of bizarre shapes for fun) only took the Table on one way.
Turns out they were the sensible ones. It was relentless to climb - like the horrible other side of Corn Du where you have to scramble your way to the top, pulling yourself up on the rocks above you.The view was pretty spectacular though, but not as good as the coffee and triple chocolate muffin at the cafe on the top which somehow duped me into thinking the journey down wouldn't be as bad.
It wasn't as bad. It was worse.

One thing that I wasn't particularly impressed by was Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years' imprisonment.
For a place that could - and should - have brought such a tragic and sadly still relevant issue to life, it didn't.
After being to the genocide memorial museum in Rwanda, which was so moving as well as informative, I think there are a lot of things they could do better as the place was so impersonal and brushed over a lot of important issues that I still don't fully understand.

Other than walking up mountains, hopping on and off the hop on, hop off buses and visiting the most obvious tourist attractions in town, we've drunk buckets of coffee, eaten a lot of cake and shopped loads. My most recent purchases include many packets of springbok, kudu and oryx biltong, a Springboks rugby jersey and a lot of unnecessary tat that will look extremely out of place in my house!

Most of that tat has now been packed away in my big pink rucksack and with the exception of a now one-eared hippo, most things have been packed away in one piece.

Packing it all wasn't fun and I expect lugging it all the way back home won't be either. But, in the words of John Denver, "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go..."

Even though I've had an amazing time in Africa, I'm really, really looking forward to going home. I'll probably write more about my experiences in a few days once I've had a chance to settle back into real life but for now I'm signing off from my last blog written in Africa as I'll be leaving for the airport soon.

So to finish off, I'll borrow some more words off John Denver -

"'Coz I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again..."

(But I hope it's soon!)

I WAS THERE!

As soon as we crossed the border from Namibia into South Africa, the temperature plummeted and the jeans, fleeced walking trousers, long sleeved tops, hat, scarf and gloves were fished out of the bottom of the big rucksack. It felt like we were back home in the middle of winter with the howling wind, horizontal rain and localised flooding.
("You tricked me into coming to Africa. It's supposed to be warm here. Stupid country" - Anwen Price, 10/06/12)

It took almost three months to get from Uganda to South Africa, but we made it to the Wales v New Zealand game of the Junior World Championship with three hours until kick off - perfect timing!

There were four of us who braved the sub-zero temperatures and made it to Stellenbosch university where Baby Wales were playing the Baby Blacks followed by England v Ireland - me & Fani Ani and Sarah & Girl Alex (as their bad luck would have it, both English).
Luckily, a Nanna Glenys from Mold meant that Sarah was supporting Wales and Girl Alex, being the lovely person that she is, also joined in with Welsh chants. (I did have to give Alex a bit of a stern talking to though.
"Look love, if you're going to be sitting next to me at a rugby game, there are two rules.
1. Get a pint in your hand. Now.
2. You can drop that posh little accent of yours as soon as you like and talk tidy like me an' 'er. From now on, it's 'Way-Ulz' or 'C'mon Cymru'. Got it? Good girl. Now, let's cwtch up - it's bloody freezing."

As most Welsh people reading this will know, it was a brilliant game and Baby Wales did us so proud with a 9 - 6 victory (the first time that New Zealand have ever lost a game in the JWC) and I'm so chuffed to be able to say, "I WAS THERE!"

After leaving Stellenbosch, we headed towards Cape Town where we'll be spending the rest of our time in Africa before flying home to the Promised Land of hot showers, comfy beds and beauty salons that don't give you third degree burns as part of a leg wax ... Can't wait!

(In other news ...
There are so many fit blokes in Cape Town! There seems to be a hotty at every corner we turn around.
However, as promised to Dr Morris, I haven't fallen in love with a South African seeing as she, "couldn't stand someone with that dreadful accent hanging round us all the time"!)

Swakopmund, sky diving & sand dunes

After a night of bush camping at Spitzkoppe between some seriously massive orange rocks (technical description unavailable), we made our way to Swakopmund, a town building a reputation as the adrenaline capital of Southern Africa.

If I could only use one word to sum up the journey to Swakopmund, it would be desolate.
Preternaturally bright blue skies hung over vast horizons of inhospitable desert and a nothingness that was quite foreboding to drive through. We drove for miles and miles without seeing another person, vehicle or town which encouraged a sense of uncomfortable isolation we haven't felt anywhere else on the trip (I'd rather break down on the A470 / Manor Way junction at midnight again rather than an unforgiving Namibian desert road!).
With the exception of a few hardy birds, there were no signs of life at all - even the river beds had dried up - so we were more than happy to eventually reach Swakopmund.

Unfortunately, a severe sand storm was due to hit the town and surrounding area when we were there so there was a possibility all activities could be called off. Not wanting to chance it, Gary, Hector and I signed up to sky dive later that day.
(Luckily we hadn't seen the footage of the American woman falling out of her harness earlier that week, although my last words to the tandem master before jumping were, "There are two parachutes in there, right?")

I can't begin to put into words the exhilaration of sky diving so I'm not even going to try as I think the photos below say it all!

We also went on a two hour, stomach churning quad bike ride over the dunes which caused a significant increase in heart rate. We all decided to use semi-automatic bikes which allowed us to navigate some serious hairpin bends at far faster speeds than we should have done. I wasn't too keen on that.
Despite my (small) collection of speeding points, I prefer driving on tarmac roads with white lines in the middle rather than chance the wilderness and sheer drops of shape-shifting sand dunes thank you.
According to some of the boys, it's the closest they'll ever get to realising their childhood dreams of riding a speeder through the deserts of Tatooine (whatever that means!).

Swakopmund is a very bizarre little town - not quite African, not quite German (Namibia was colonised by the Germans) - with its colonial-era infrastructure, pastel coloured buildings, half timbered houses and manicured lawns on a backdrop of swaying palm trees, orange sand dunes and volatile blue ocean.

We're now travelling down to Fish River Canyon (said to be the second largest canyon on the world although there's some debate over that because some say it's a gorge. Potato / Potatoe I say) via Sossusvlei.

Walking up Namibia's most famous and iconic sand dune (imaginatively named Dune 45. Guess how many kms outside of Sossusvlei it is?) was a killer. I was so out of breath, I was concerned I'd dislodged a lung halfway up.
It was worth all the huffing and puffing though as the 360 view of surrounding terracotta dunes was travel brochure stunning.
Whilst climbing up was a real struggle (which was much, much harder than I'd imagined), bounding down the sides was brilliant fun, even when face-planting the soft sand!

(Rivers House walkers, please someone arrange some outings for when I get back. I desperately need to get my fitness level up after three months of excessive eating and drinking!)

Anyway, we only have a few more days in Namibia before we arrive at South Africa where we'll we spending a few days in Stellenbosch - land of wine tours and, for the week we're there, home to the junior rugby world cup.
As luck would have it, we arrive at midday and kick off between Wales and New Zealand is at 2.30!

C'mon Cymru!