Guest post!!

(actually By Neil..)

Hello there folks... managed to wrestle the computer away from Dave, so there's mutiny on the Cape and the guests have taken over the ship ;-)

Carrie & I are staying till saturday and we really don't want to leave. Our hosts have been extra splendid and the days have been fun packed and non-stop.

here's my top moments so far:

1. 'No-limits' desert quad biking- basically racing along with Ostrich and Wilderbeasts at 40 miles per hour. None of us can actually sit up straight now though.

2. Evening Safari: with baby Hippo's, Rhinos and a strange Antelope like beast, which has memory loss. (apparently, Lions surprise them so they bolt off in all directions, but soon forget what's chasing them and stand still, so the lion gets an easy meaty feast without really trying...genius)

3. The Cape Grace Hotel and Bascule Whisky Bar: Ok- admittedly I did some research before we came over and demanded we try this place out. It was aaaaaamazing. A gormet 3-course meal with some terrific local wine (Slaley Shiraz) for less than £100 for the four of us. The Waiter (Taras) also bought out 4 other great wines for us to sample free of charge. Underneath the restuarant is the Bascule Whisky bar which has 641 different bottles to try. (cue images of small child in a sweet shop :-P ) Such was the experience that Dave has suggested i start a whisky blog...challenge accepted!!

4. Table Mountain trip: probably the best views of this amazing city you're ever likely to see.

5. Dune jumping at Noord Hoek Beach: A new olympic sport has been born!!

That's all for now- a big thankyou to Dave and Nicky for a wonderful time. we'll be back soon! Nx

Ppppppppick upa penguin Part Deux

Second trip to see the penguins, but this time to far more picturesque beach - boulders beach.




Penguin Fact #1: The penguin doesn't have hollow bones like other birds.
Penguin Fact #2: Penguins smell.

Is this not the best street sign in the world?

Robben Island

We took in the tour of Robben Island, the offshore prison in which Nelson Mandell served the majority of his prison sentence. Quite an interesting place with hige amounds of history, but let down slighly by the highly regimented tour they run. Still well worth a visit.








Congratulations have to go to Carrie 'Sea Legs' Ridley for holding it together on the bumpy 35 minutes crossing from Cape Town to the island and back.

Wildlife quiz

To all wannabe Attenborough out there he's a little trivia quiz.

Can you tell which footprint is which? To give you a clue there's a Buffalo and Springbok and then a mystery entrant. "Which is which, nobody knows..."

Animal Magic

Croc


Wildebeast


Springbok


Rhino


Cheetah

Back to it

Back to work today. That's rubbish. But at least it affords me some time to update the blog on the past weeks activities.

The Aquila game reserve was an inspired choice thanks to Nicky. I pretty smooth 2 hour drive from Cape Town got us out into the sticks and to the pretty well set up reserve. We thought it was initially going to be a Disney land experience but were relieved when it turned out not to be.

The people there were all very friendly and the place was set up perfectly for us tourists.

The first safari drive on the back of a Toyota. This was an afternoon/evening drive and was awesome.

Animals included
Springbok
Wildebeest
Buffalo
Hipo
Rhino
Elan
Zebra
Giraffe
Lions

Although the place certainly wasn’t Kruger national park, it was still pretty well stocked and there was none of the usual hunting rounds to try and find something moving.

Then it was back to the camp for another red meet dinner.

We’d be warned that we should grab one of the rangers when we needed to return to our huts because some of the animals can come up into the compound and meeting them wasn’t likely to be the nicest of moments for either party. Nothing was hanging out though. At about 4 am though I began to hear hoof steps somewhere outside the hut. Slightly delirious we got up and ha d a look out of the little windows and there right under the window was a huge Buffalo helping itself to the shrubs. Pretty awesome to see them this close. Nicky recons she got to stare one out but that’s still to be proven.

We had the option to do another game drive but opted for the quad bikes as something more adventurous. As well as the fun razzing round, we did see more Wildebeest, Ostrich and Neil saw a Black Eagle.

Defiantly recommended for anyone coming out here. We don’t think you get much from doing more than one game drive and the completely static menu means that staying for more than 1 night might get a bit repetitive.

Here’s some facts I garnered from the trip

1. A Rhino coast about £70000


2. The Lions have to be kept in a separate enclosed valley as they’d clean them out of Springbok in about 3 months if let out.


3. A Springbok doesn’t have to drink for it’s whole lifetime


4. Giraffe only have 7 vertebrae, the same as all other mammals including us.

Safari Time

Time to hit the wilderness. Aquila Private Game Reserve.

Here's the Zebras.



And here's us in our lodge.

Quad biking

We took the chance for a quad bike safari, which was essentially an excuse to razz round the game park on quad bikes with little regard for the exotic animals we'd seen the day before.

It was pretty dusty.