Moutains & Beaches

Hello all,

My climb up Table Mountain turned out to be rather strenuous. I met a guy at breakfast who also wanted to go and he said it would only take 30mins to walk to the base of the climb.

Yeah right!

It took us 1 1/2hours... plus the 2 1/2 hours to climb the thing. Table mountain is at 1,000m and Cape Town is at sea level, so a very long day. Great views though and interesting companion. He used to be in the French Foreign Legion. Said that most of them weren't French, approx. 80% were Nazi's and if you lost a fight, you had to heat up a knife in the fire and cut yourself! Showed me several scars on his stomach....

ALso spent a day on tour of the cape which was fine. SA reminds me of NZ - the scenery, the towns. Not the townships though. Was thinking about why here the contrast between black and white, poor and rich is so great. Admittedly part of it comes from whole bays which have R3,500,000 homes and around the next corner are townships with falling down houses and tin roofs. But you do get similar contrasts in Australia. Eventually I realised it's because there coloured people make up the vast amount of the population. In Oz, you can forget about Aborigines for the most part as there are so few left. You can't do that here! ANyway, if S Africans can deal with it, then so can I.

Been to Plettenberg bay where I saw whales in the harbour and did my first dive. 17 degrees, so not particularly warm but interesting dive even though the vis was terrible. Saw a dark shy shark (tiny, only about 30 cm long and, unsurprisngly, rather shy!)

Currently in Jeffrey's bay - one of the worlds best surfing spots. I am not surfing as am terrible at it. Just thought I'd check it out as supposed to be a lovely town, great beach. Which it is.

Lots of animals here - have already seen baboons, ostriches, some type of deer and lots of birds. In that way SA is much better than NZ - the maori's ate nearly all their animals to extincition. It's also incredibly laid back here.

NOt a great deal to say. Have been taking long walks on the beach, meditating, cooking, reading - nothing major. Am heading further up East before I start to look for work. Just too cold here! (the water that is).

Hope all is good with you,
kx