South Africa

At the beginning of September, Neill and I embarked on a journey that took us, literally, around the world. His sister has been working in South Sudan for the past several months and family and friends have been going out individually to visit her, meeting in different locations every time.  When Neill and I planned to go visit, we all chose South Africa -- a new continent for us, and far enough away that it would be a new experience for her.  I thought I'd share some photos here, because it was a pretty amazing experience, and a pretty gorgeous country.

But first, can I just say how weird globalization is?  Our outbound itinerary took us through Seoul, and what should I see after disembarking the plane?

 

A Coffee Bean?  Really?  My ex-Southern Californian friends and I have often remarked that it's too bad it's so hard to find a Coffee Bean outside Los Angeles and its surrounds, but I guess you just have to hop a plane to......South Korea.

Anyway, after 35 hours of travel to Cape Town (SERIOUSLY, 35 hours) and only a week there, we didn't want to get on any more planes so we stayed in the Western Cape, but tried to see as much of it as we could. I don't really know how to put words to the beauty of the landscape, so I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Our itinerary included Cape Town itself...

 

Table Mountain... 

Boulders Beach (not pictured...penguins!)...

and Cape Point...

After which we headed to a game reserve, where we saw some gorgeous sights...

And made some new friends...

(hiking out to meet some rhinos)

And only once did one of us almost get eaten by a cheetah. (Neill's photo!)

After a few days roughing it (ha! I actually have no problem roughing it, but can't say I minded the seat warmers in the jeep in the mornings, and sherry when we returned in the evenings...), we headed to Stellenbosch.

On the way to which we saw, oh, just some breathtaking waterfalls kinda hanging out on the side of the highway.

 Parts of Stellenbosch looked very familiar to these Californians...

But we don't really have mountains like this in the Bay Area.

And every night, due to the wonders of modern technology, we got to see and talk to this little guy, from half way across the world.

But it sure was nice to hug him when we got home.

Our homeward bound journey went west, through Senegal and Washington, DC, so when all was said and done, we'd flown all the way around the globe.  (By the way, this is not the most efficient way to travel to and from South Africa, but you take what you can get when you're buying with air miles.)  But all the travel was completely worth it to see what we saw and experience what we did -- the above was just the tip of the iceberg.

PLUS, I got some new (local South African!) yarn...but that will have to wait until another post!