(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!)
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