With a little help from my friends

I write to you from the middle of Bangkok!! We arrived yesterday evening having already booked our accommodation, which we’ve realised is not always the best idea as those who create the websites for such establishments utilise a fair amount of poetic license, the pictures alone suggest such elegance and comfort that you wonder how they can charge such reasonable room rates! When you arrive it all becomes clear…
Anyhoo, we spent our last week in the Philippines in San Juan, La Union, the aforementioned surf resort. Since blogging last we met some great people, Will from Canada, Gustov from Sweden, and especially Mary from California and Amelie from France who we spent time getting to know over the past couple of weeks, lots of nice girly chats (which Adam patiently endured), sunbathing and surfing. The surf was very changeable, one day lovely and kind for beginners such as myself, the next big and scary! Managed to totally spook myself one day as Mary and I made our way through the large and powerful shore-break (http://www.usoceansafety.com/safety/popup/shore.asp), I was basically too slow at getting out there and convinced myself that I was going to be absolutely pounded if I tried, so I left the water. Feeling defeated and a little embarrassed (as I also had an audience of several very skilled Filipino surfers and various sun-bathing tourists), I sat on the beach trying to psych myself up again. Adam arrived at the scene and Mary (who had successfully made it through the surf) came back to see if I was okay. I admitted I was scared and they offered to help me get back out into the surf. After swallowing my pride, I allowed them to help me, and Mary and I made it through the shore-break and I ended up feeling less like a loser, yay!
We returned to Manila for a couple of days before our flight to Bangkok, and enjoyed a full day of searching through three different malls (which were thankfully next to each other) for the best possible deal for a new camera. Our camera, after a couple of days in San Juan, decided it would stop taking proper pictures in the day – outside, at night time, yes, but in the day, or in a well-lit room, no. We found and bought a good camera and we pray it does not play up.
We had breakfast with the Migrasos on our last morning in the Navs Headquarters before heading in a taxi to the airport. We had a good conversation with the taxi driver and he did not rip us off, hooray!
Bangkok is as busy and noisy and smelly as people say, but I’ve found it quite fun! We’re staying just off Khao San Road which is a hub of tourist activity, you see many studenty gap year types but also middle aged couples and even some young families. There are stalls and shops selling food, t-shirts, dresses, flip flops, sunglasses, jewelry, bags, knives, tattoos and lots of bars offering cocktails, food and “ping pong shows” (for the innocent among you I shall not elaborate). Coming from Manila where people gawp at you because you’re the only white person they’ve seen for months, to Bangkok which is crawling with backpackers is an interesting change. Strangely comforting.
We were taken today on a tuk-tuk tour of various sites around the Khao San Area. First we viewed some monuments and Buddhas. Next, our driver became absolutely convinced that Adam wanted a tailor made suit, and proceeded to drive us to the most expensive tailors he could find. Three in total. The first time was the most embarrassing as we were brought into the shop, taken upstairs and into a plush office, the walls lined with various expensive fabrics, given complimentary bottled water, and given catalogues to flick through while the salesman gave us his pitch. At the end of this we asked for some prices, he said 250 Pounds Sterling and we said sorry goodbye! He led us out with the helpful words “you should have told me at the start” as we continued to apologise for wasting his precious time. The next tailors we walked in, asked for the price saying “we don’t want to waste your time”, he told us the price, and we left. And the next place. Our driver seemed surprised that we were so speedy in our decision not to buy anything, and proceeded to take us to what he described as a “big factory”. This sounded cheap and promising. What he didn’t tell us was that it was in fact a jewelry factory. Again we politely went into the building he’d driven us to, were given a guided tour of the jewelers making the jewelry, and were then taken into a huge sales room filled with gold and silver rings of varying carats. I tried some on and made appropriate “yes it’s lovely”s and “how beautiful”s, and after showing us a few promotions, the sales lady thankfully left us to browse at our leisure and we escaped unscathed! Hehe what fun!!
We are off to the weekend market tomorrow which apparently promises many bargains, then Sunday we take a bus to Koh Chang, an island about 6 hours from Bangkok, to stay in a cliff top bungalow!

With Hope

Alona Beach is on Panglao Island just at the west of Bohol, a white sandy beach with clear blue water, lots of resorts along the seafront and therefore lots of tourists. It’s a divers haven with amazing reefs and warm warm water. We stayed at Citadel Alona Inn, a short walk from the beach but much cheaper than the beach side resorts. It was a lovely place, very well kept and organised with really sweet, polite staff and a British owner. Cold showers again although this is becoming almost normal now! We spent the first couple of days getting our bearings, sunbathing and being offered massages on the beach by random women wearing light green scrubs. They are quite persistent! I unfortunately became ill again, the sore throat and general exhaustion combo rearing its ugly head for the third time during our trip. We therefore played lots of scrabble on the balcony and I felt like some sickly woman in an old infirmary being visited by a kind young man who would play board games with me all afternoon. I then had a sort of mini-meltdown when I came to the realisation that as a result of our self-imposed budget restrictions we were not really doing anything hugely exciting, simply spending our money on accommodation, travel and the most basic of food. This combined with illness, being in a strange place and missing people hugely brought us both to breaking point when we realised that all we really wanted was to go home. We prayed and almost immediately felt that the answer was our meticulous, almost obsessive budgeting, that, in the world’s eyes, would be considered sensible, shrewd, but with a heavenly perspective actually felt foolish and wasteful! So we scrapped the budget book and decided to trust in God and start LIVING! We celebrated that evening with a beautiful meal on the beach, and booked a Bohol island tour for the next day, and for the first time in weeks, felt peaceful about what we were doing! Yes!!!!
The island tour was with our guide JoJo on the back of a motorbike, so much fun! We saw some Spanish dudes around a table, tarsiers (the most hilarious little creatures like a cross between a bush baby, a rat and a monkey), monkeys, an amazing man-made forest, the Chocolate Hills, the Loboc River which we cruised down with a buffet lunch, a very cool cave (well actually it was warm, strange) and a big old Catholic church where I was given a shawl to wrap around my naked shoulders as this is considered “inappropriate” in a house of God. Hmmm. That evening we met the lovely Charmaine and Joseph, a Filipino couple who were on holiday. We played scrabble, drank rum and coke and ate their food, it was good. We hope to meet up with them in Manila in a few days.
The next day we got up at 6am to go for a boat trip which included dolphin watching, snorkelling and island hopping. See adam’s blog for more details, suffice to say, it was interesting! Within 2 days of taking self prescribed antibiotics I felt sooo much better for the first time in weeks, awesome.
We also visited Bohol Bee Farm, an organic farm with holiday huts and a beautiful restaurant. We were given a very comprehensive and hands-on tour of the farm and ate flowers for lunch, needless to say, impressive! I’m sure Adam will delight you all on our return with his newly discovered bee-related trivia whenever the subject arises…That evening we met a British couple who were staying at Citadel, Steph and Will. We chatted to them about possible Thailand plans and awoke to find, to our delight, a mini guide to Thailand that Steph had made the previous night and put under our door! The kindness of strangers!! We left Citadel late morning and travelled to Tagbilaran on the mainland of Bohol, checked into a hotel as we had a flight the next day at lunch time, watched Sherlock Holmes at the cinema at the mall, then came back to our ant infested room and watched 90s films on cable TV all evening, Rob Lowe as a jack-the-lad Navy Seal with a moustache, inspiring stuff.
We then flew from the very basic, under-construction Tagbilaran Airport to the very beautiful, state of the art newly refurbished Ninoy Aquino International Airport. This was strangely comforting. It’s interesting to come from England where everything, generally speaking, has the appearance of being clean, fixed or finished. The Philippines, a country which is still developing, has a massive gap between the rich and the poor. You’ll see huge areas of construction/development of beautiful malls, hotels, roads, etc, then other areas that are run down, with big potholes in the roads, rubble everywhere and whole families living on the streets. Speaking of malls, we spent the whole afternoon in the Mall of Asia that day, we enjoyed mooching around the shops and, glory be, Starbucks. Beautiful smooth coffee, amazing chocolate hazelnut cheesecake/torte, wow. I love you Starbucks. How I have missed you. We then made our way across the city to the bus terminal and took the night bus to San Juan which promised sun, sand and surf. We arrived at 5am which was slightly earlier than intended and proceeded to sleep in a bus shelter for 2 hours until sunrise. Classy. We were then VERY kindly allowed to check in early to Lola Nanny’s Surf Retreat at no extra cost, and slept the morning away. When we awoke we headed to the front of Lola Nanny’s and looked out at the beach, we had arrived! Sunny, sandy, surfy, blue skies, friendly people, good food, yes. We’ve spent the past few days surfing, meeting new people, and Emma and Alan who work at Lola Nanny’s are especially lovely, with a real gift for hospitality. We went the other day with lots of other peeps to a nice surf spot called the Cement Factory, so named because just by the beach, there is, in fact, a cement factory, and not a lot else. It’s great here. So that’s me up to date! Wow.

Journeying

I arrived at the internet cafe and logged onto facebook, as per usual, and was shocked to discover that a friend of ours, Fay Martin, had died unexpectedly of natural causes. She was beautiful, gentle, caring, brave and thoughtful, and we were privileged to have her as part of our church small group until she went abroad last year. This was such sad news and we’re praying for her family and friends, that they would be comforted and feel some peace in the knowledge that she is with Jesus now.
On a lighter note, I am now well. I self prescribed some antibiotics as my throat and ear thing went away then came back for the third time in 2 months. After two days the pain was gone and I felt better than I had for long while, thank you Jesus!
Since my last post we’ve done A LOT. We spent a few more days in Daet, met a group of British peeps who were traveling through the Philippines. New Year here, even in the sleepiest of little surfing towns, is a frenzy of fireworks (the use of which would probably be illegal in Britain, especially the way they handle them!), drinking, dancing and, of course, videoke. Again we participated, good sports that we are, and a good time was had by all. A bit more surfing was done, although the currents were very strong and a little scary at times, obtained a monster bruise on my left arm from Adam’s flailing surfboard at a moment when I foolishly came a little too close, the kind of bruise that can’t be hidden and means that even more staring/pointing ensues, what fun!
We left Daet and began our journey to Cebu, which took about 2 and a half days in all! Traveling from A to B is quite difficult here, the infrastructure is such that what should be one boat journey is in fact 3 boat journeys and 3 bus rides, not to mention jeepneys and tricycles in between! We got to Cebu City late at night, exhausted but happy to finally be there. Cebu is a nice city, much cleaner than Manila, more green spaces and much more used to us Westerners. We had our first hot shower of the Philippines which was absolute bliss, and watched cable TV movies all evening in our good standard hotel room after a very lovely dinner in a local restaurant. We explored the malls and I bought a rash vest, essential. We then headed for Bohol from the sea port which was pretty difficult to describe to the taxi driver, but we got there.
A short boat journey and a new friend later and we arrived in the port town of Tubigon. We went for an evening drive to Sagbayan Peak, a mini Chocolate Hills (that will come later), with Elma. The next day we traveled to Panglao Island, to Alona Beach where we intended to spend the next week. I will leave it there as I am about to be thrown out of the internet cafe, sorry this is so brief, will update again asap!!

change is good

Our last week in South Africa was great, we were again sleeping in beds without the threat of gale-force wind exposure! Marlon and Rene invited us and Sheila, who was also visiting from Southampton, to come on the Impact Centre staff away day at the Farmyard near Stellenbosch. We had a braai, sunbathed and swam. We also partook of braai the following day at M&R’s house with some of their lovely friends and introduced them to Eton Mess. They, of course, thought it was wonderful. It was.
Thursday saw the arrival of the Wills family, Gary, Julia and Ed, who are fellow City Lifers from Southampton. It was great to see them for a few days and we enjoyed a turkey Christmas dinner on Friday with them and some of M&R’s family. Previous to said dinner we had mentioned to Pastor Roger, Rene’s dad, that there was such a thing as a pudding with ice-cream baked in the oven…and so the challenge arose to make baked alaska. 7 minutes in the oven later, it came out perfect, the meringue golden and the ice-cream still frozen, whoop whoop! Meringue has become something of an obsession for Adam, I think he made it 4 times that week. Saturday we had breakfast at the massive Rhodes Memorial overlooking Cape Town, then in the afternoon Rene took Sheila, Adam and I to the Twelve Apostles Hotel for high tea. The hotel is nestled at the foot of Table Mountain’s Twelve Apostles, and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, beautiful. Sheila left for the snow bound UK that evening.
Sunday the 20th of December was my birthday!!! We went to church in the morning where Gary spoke on the hope and healing in the Christmas story and Roger kindly thanked us for being there and we thanked everyone for being so so kind!! M&R very kindly lent us a car for the day, so we then, at my request, headed for the mall! We had a nice lunch at Mugg and Bean, where they do MASSIVE cakes, then shopped (I got a nice t-shirt from my husband), then went to see Avatar in 3D, it was very good and when I wasn’t thoroughly absorbed by the amazing graphics flying out of the screen at me, I couldn’t stop peeking at Adam and laughing at him and myself in our 3D specs, we looked particularly ridiculous!!! A lovely birthday!
The next day M&R again lent us the car so that we could drive around the Cape Peninsula. We stopped in Fish Hoek and ate some snoek, stopped in Simon’s Town and saw some antiques and a cute jazz band playing Christmas classics, at Boulders Beach Adam swam and we both saw penguins on a sneaky free beach we found down the coast from the 3 pound a go official “penguin beach” hehe! Penguins are strange creatures, very cute, they were walking straight past us like we weren’t there! Then we crossed the Peninsula to a beautiful surfing beach at Scarborough before heading to Chapman’s Peak, a rather treacherous but absolutely beautiful pass around various cliff faces leading to Hout Bay. The whole day was filled with awesome scenery, I would highly recommend a trip if you’re ever in Cape Town. I felt pretty exhausted the whole day which was a shame and I put it down to being hormonal but it turns out I was just ill!
After saying our goodbyes at the Impact Centre we went back to pack our fresh laundry then headed for Cape Town International Airport. It was odd to say goodbye to Marlon and Rene after so long, it felt like we weren’t really leaving…However, 11 hours later, we landed in Doha where we would spend 18 hours in transit in the glorious Quiet Room. By this point my throat and ears were really sore. I slept for almost the entire flight to Doha, then about 5 more hours in the QR. To my absolute delight there was, in the QR an abandoned brand new copy of the last book in the Twilight series, a book I had been reading at Rene’s but hadn’t managed to finish – I believe God put it there as he knew it would occupy me for the next 10 hours – he cares about the little things! Having finished the book with 3 hours before the next flight I then wandered around the airport with Adam and realised quite quickly that I should not have given up our precious QR seats. No matter. Listening to Regina Spektor whilst doing sudoko in the middle of a Middle Eastern airport can be quite relaxing. The next flight was 8 hours long, I again slept for most of the time, only waking to eat and medicate. Adam was an absolute love as he asked for water, panadol, and boiled sweets to ease my poorlines. The descent was interesting for my ears which have yet to properly pop!
And so we arrived in Manila. Our bodies felt like it was 6am, it was in fact 3pm. We got an expensive taxi to the Migraso’s home in the Navigators Headquarters in Manila. I began to perk up when we were greeted at the door by DaiDai (diedie) and NoiNoi (noynoy), the two eldest kids of Kuya Bobot and Atta Jean. The youngest is BB (“baby”). They showed us to our room 5 floors up which is a dorm with just me and Adam in it. The heat is not as intense as it could be, it’s about 28 degrees most days with about 75% humidity! We slept for a couple of hours then joined the whole family downstairs. They then invited us to join them and some friends for Christmas eve celebrations. This involved a LOT of food (we’re talking 3 main meals served throughout the evening), a crazy filipino film (about two ladies who are twins in their 40s, one’s a mad business tycoon and the other’s a simpleton and they live with their put-upon widowed father, funny but strange), and the dreaded VIDEOKE. Videoke is big here, and as most of you know, I’m not the biggest fan of Kareoke as a general rule (pride issues), and tried to stress that I was VERY tired after the long journey and my throat was VERY sore but they insisted, and, in the effort to be polite, I sang not one but TWO songs, cringe. I know some of you must love it and I’m sorry I do not. It was nice and humbling though.
Christmas day was meant to be spent with the Migrasos and Bobot’s brother and his family. As I awoke at 7am with an intense headache and raging ear/throat ache, my new favourite superhero, Adam the Brown, went to tell the family that I was ILL. He returned with Kuya Bobot and they were both laden with a jug of water, ibuprofen, paracetamol, vitamin C, fruit and cake. After fully medicating myself I slept until 3pm. Adam also slept as he was somewhat exhausticated. What a Merry, Merry Christmas. We then went to get soothing soothing strepsils and some Christmas gifts from the mall. I lasted an hour then went back to bed. Boxing Day was better, DaiDai showed us the wet market where she was keen to show us a chicken being slaughtered, and of course we obliged. Hopefully this new experience will prove useful at a later date, Badger, when it comes to killing livestock at 19BB. We also went to the mega mall the next day and bought some essential items. We have also discovered that we (white people) are somewhat of a novelty here, and this brings with it A LOT of staring and pointing and giggling. This takes some getting used to, but once you realise that it is not your skirt tucked into your pants/pen on your face/that you have a third eye, that in fact people are just curious, it is possible to function without paranoia.
Monday 28th consisted of a bus journey for which we arose at 3:30am and waited for 4 and a half hours (during which we were swapped from one bus to another twice and I phoned my lovely family at home) for the bus to leave eventually at 8am! We arrived in Daet, our destination, at 18:30 and found a hostel at the beach with rooms for 5 pounds a night, bargain! The people here are lovely, very welcoming. We discovered that night that the people in Daet also love videoke. They have some interesting interpretations of classics such as “Seasons in the sun” and “Candle in the wind”, which is a delight to hear continuing into the early hours.
Yesterday we went shopping, today we went surfing. Our instructors had different approaches, mine much more vocal and instructive than Adam’s, it was good but exhausting, the water is warm here so no need for wetsuits that does mean more cuts and grazes. We didn’t see any sharks. We continue south on Sunday.
I’m still pretty tired, my throat is still sore and my left ear still hasn’t popped, it’s irritating and I’d appreciate your prayers!

Me-Julie and the flying chairs

So Monday we handed back the hire car, arriving to rain in Cape Town, the first we’d seen. René the angel Parker kindly picked us up from Value Car Hire and drove us to Ashanti Backpackers, our home for the next week. We pitched our tent in a sandpit with approximately 2 inches between us and the neighbouring campers, nice and cosy…That evening we caught up with our old overlanding buddies in a restaurant on the much anticipated Long Street, apparently THE place to be if you’re young and happening in Cape Town. It’s definitely bustling and vibrant and I felt surprisingly safe which is nice. On Tuesday Julie and Natasha flew to CT from Port Elizabeth one day late as there had been bad weather at PE. That afternoon we went to Mr Pickwicks, the sign outside claimed that they served “the best milkshakes in the world”,  a claim that hadn’t escaped Adam’s notice, and had to, of course, be tested. It was very good milkshake.  That evening we went briefly to a Cuban bar where one of the staff insisted upon taking us on a detailed tour of the whole establishment, toilets included! It was very plush with random porcelain vases and figurines of Jesus everywhere, our guide emphasised “they are all for sale”, delightful! Then we went to an open mic night at a local bar which was good, reminded me muchly of the Candle Club at The Talking Heads in Soton. One guy shouted his songs, the other had a lovely voice and sang in French, beautiful.

Wednesday was relatively chilled, but we still managed to walk about 6km and buy a painting! The next day Adam did lots of civilised cultured things such as visiting Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned) and District Six. I, instead, went to the beach with Julie and Natasha. To be fair, the beach is one of my favourite places and Julie one of my favourite people, so this made perfect sense, and it didn’t do my tan any harm either! Friday J&N went on a tour of the Cape Peninsula and A&I went to the National Gallery, they had an exhibition on the Nobel Peace Prize Winners, v creative and informative. We had a braai in the evening then went out for drinks on Long Street.

Saturday Julie and myself enjoyed the shopping delights of the Waterfront whilst Natasha went to the Aquarium and Adam, again, appreciated more of CT’s history at the Castle. We all then met at Spur Steakhouse for dinner on the balcony, where I had a near-death experience with a gust of wind, 3 chairs and a bottle of ketchup. I was somewhat on edge for the rest of the evening and the next day as I more fully appreciated the lethal nature of plastic furniture. This was not helped by the gail force winds that blew through our campsite, necessitating an impromptu sleepover in J&N’s room that night. On Sunday morning we bid J&N adieu after a thoroughly joyous time, feeling strange that it would be 7 months before we’d see them again. We visited the Jewish museum with our overlanding friends Frida and Christian, then were picked up by the angel Parkers who took us again to their lovely home.

Garden Route

I have to admit I’m better at updating this blog than my own personal travel journal, which I’m ashamed to say has become a bi-weekly event…this is partly due to my discovery, thanks to René, of the Twilight books, which I’m sure some of you can understand (Alex, I’m thinking of you my dear). I’m now on the third one!

So last time you heard we were off along the famed Garden Route. The first two nights we stayed in Wilderness on a hill-top vegetable farm where we could pick our own whilst overlooking the beach on one side and the mountains on the other. We canoed the river, walked the beach and hot-chocolated in nearby Knysna. Met some nice people there, a Dutch couple who had got married, then gone on a year’s travel/mission/discovery to find out what God wanted them to do. I really admired their boldness, in the evenings they would put some fairly cheesy Christian movies (made in US of A) on in the main lounge, which wouldn’t be my own personal style of sharing the love but there were guys there who would eat their dinner on the sofas and watch, seeming to not completely rip the michael out of them, it was good. And I, obviously, was weeping by the end of each film as marriages were repaired and lives were turned around, what a sucker

Our next stop was Jeffrey’s Bay, the famous surf capital of the Garden Route, where there was no surf. We stayed at “Island Vibe” which was one of the liveliest hostels we’d come across, filled with excitable and scantily clad 18 to 20 year-olds, made only too clear at half 2 in the morning as we attempted to sleep in our tent which was pitched in what could most accurately be described as the pub garden. This was okay in itself but when one has been kept awake ’til the early hours it somewhat grated to then be awoken by the clearly audible SHOUTS of the cleaning staff at 5am as they conversed across aforementioned pub garden. Delightful. However, Island Vibe was where we met up with the lovely Julie Mason and her friend Natasha as they bussed it along the GR themselves, which was great (more of them in the next blog). We also met a nurse called David from Poole who’d grown up in Rwanda and was just finishing Bible School in South Africa, random but lovely!

We then made our way back towards Cape Town, stopping to watch bungee-jumpers launch themselves from Bloukran’s Bridge, apparently the world’s highest bungee! Tempted me slightly but not enough. Then we spent the afternoon on Central Beach in Plettenberg Bay. Beautiful beaches, houses, people and weather, it honestly felt like walking onto the set of the OC! After an afternoon of sunbathing and rock scrambling we drove to Buffalo Bay on a whim (thankyou Jesus!). We arrived as the sun was setting over perfect surf and found the backpackers on the beach which was soooo laid back, lovely. They told us to pitch our tent on the beach, praise be!!! We asked a guy about surf hire and he said he had a mate who could rent stuff to us cheaply…this never actually materialised but hey ho, plenty of time for that in the Philippines, hehe! Everyone seemed to keep themselves to themselves at that place on the whole. We spent two nights there then made our way back to CT, sun-drenched and contented.

Camping, rain and lovely people

We’ve had an interesting three weeks travelling from Zambia to South Africa. Our overland tour started at the Zambezi Waterfront Hotel, where we watched the sunset over the Zambezi River, very beautiful. Our accommodation that night was a tent full of mosquitos, Adam went on a killing spree before we slept, using his torch as a guide and his book as a weapon, and he showed no mercy…

Then we were on the road at 8am, which we came to discover was a late start! From then on almost every day it was a 5am start, as we had to pack up our tents (and clean them if it had been raining), eat breakfast and wash up, and pack the truck to be on the road by 6am. Our group consisted of 24 people, 2 Americans, 5 Scottish, 6 English, 1 Irish, 1 Swedish, 1 Australian, 4 German, 1 Dutch, 1 French-Canadian, and our 2 South African guides. The drives were often long (5-8 hours) and sometimes toilet stops would be in the middle of nowhere, ie ”go find a tree to pee behind and mind out for snakes”. We met some really lovely, interesting people, including two girls from Southampton of all places!

We travelled down through Namibia, Botswana into South Africa, pitching our tents every night, we swam in a cage in the Okavango River (to avoid the crocs!), went on a river cruise and saw hippo and crocodiles, we flew over the Okavango Delta (amazing but slightly tainted by my air-sickness…), went on game drives where we saw zebra, giraffe, ostrich, wildebeast, rhino, elephant, springbok, warthog, hippo, but no lions

On the whole it has been HOT with little shade from the sun, although the last three nights we had thunderstorms with the loudest thunder you’ve ever heard and we got drenched! Thankfully our tent only leaked a little bit!

We finished our tour in Johannesburg with a dinner at a steak house which served ostrich, kudu, impala and warthog – v tasty!

Then we travelled straight down to Durban, stayed a couple of days in the rain and cold (One night I literally had to wear all of mny layers and was still cold!), then on a whim decided to fly straight to sunny Cape Town! We know now that it was God’s prompting us to go as if we’d gone when we’d originally planned we would have missed our lovely friend Kate who is living there at the mo!

We stayed in Blouberg for a couple of days (white sand and beautiful blue sea with a stunning view of Table Mountain) then came to stay with Marlon and Rene Parker, who Kate lives with at the mo, and they have been sooo kind and welcoming and generous. They have a beautiful house and pool, and we are staying in beds for the first time for a fortnight yes! Such a blessing! They help run Impact Direct Ministries which includes a Centre for prayer, healing, counselling and provides a home for those without one, they’ve seen loads of people saved from a life of addiction, prostitution and taken in orphans, people have really become part of the church family, it’s amazing.

Cape Town is a beautiful city, there’s lots to do and see and the sun shines every day so far! Yay!! We’re planning to go up the coast for a few days next week then we’ll be back in Cape Town to meet up with my lovely friend Julie who’s coming out to visit! Fun fun!!  Until next time, we miss you and love you! xxxxx

We’ve arrived!!

So we’re well into our third day in Livingstone, Zambia…We arrived on Monday somewhat sleep deprived at about half 12 in the afternoon with our luggage intact and with us! Yes!!! Here we arrived hot and exhausted, culture shocked and somewhat perplexed by the expense of things (a can of beans is about 1 english pound!!)…However we’ve found a good hostel called Fawlty Towers (a recommendation by our kind friend Jon Holley, thanks!) and proceeded to sleep all afternoon when we arrived and we prayed that God would help us adjust to the culture shock and give us a good day the next day.

The next morning we got to know two Brazilian girls who have been travelling for two years, they were lovely and made us feel really welcome, gave us loads of advice and shared lots of stories. Last night we were really touched as they sought us out to ask if they could cook for us that evening, and we had really good conversation, a great meal and exchanged emails etc.   

Other than that we’ve wandered into Livingstone and been supermarket shopping (if you think Asda is busy, this is something else!) cooked meals of porridgey type stuff for breakfast, and chicken and pasta for mains, we’ve been sunbathing, chatting reading and generally relaxing before we start out at Victoria Falls to go overland on Friday!!