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What a fabulous place! The South Africans are such wonderful hosts and the food is epic! We have had no real civilisation for several months and with the strength of the pound versus the Rand we fell into the local produce. The V and A Waterfront is stuffed to the gunnels with great restaurants and just an hour and a half outside Cape Town are the famous vineyards of Stellenbosch and Franschoek. The scenery is fabulous, with huge mountains surrounding these valleys and the clearest blue skies you can imagine.

 

Every vineyard has it’s own restaurant and the competition is hot. With chefs and staff trained at the Culinary Institute in Cape Town there is no shortage of great service to go with everything else. It is a very well kept secret. We can’t wait to go back.

 

My parents joined us from the UK, rented an apartment in the V and A complex and we spent Christmas with them – which was great. We managed to see just about everything in the vicinity of Cape Town, some of it shocking and a most of it very historical. Everybody is aware of the apartheid era, but it’s not until you visit places like Robben Island and the other remnants of that ghastly age that you really appreciate what people went through to become free. Nelson Mandela truly was an amazing man.

 

We also climbed Table mountain, a near sheer 650 metre scramble up fairly large boulders to the top. The view is exceptional and the cold water at the top is very welcome. It took us just under 1 3/4 hours to do it which, having lived at sea level for the last  16 months wasn’t too bad at all. At the top you can see all the way down to Cape Point and for miles onto the Cape Flats. We visited Cape Point to see the actual rocks that we rounded at the beginning of December  which are no less spectacular by land.

 

As well as Bryan and Jacqui coming down to see us, we also had a few good friends pop by who were planning trips to South Africa anyway. It was so nice to catch up. We really have been out in the middle of no where for some time now and both of us are looking forward to coming home in May.

 

After 6 weeks of non stop socialising we felt ready to go to sea again, with around 5000 miles to go to finish our circumnavigation we were ready and duly left Cape Town with our new crew, Chris Troup and Tim Gale for the trip up to St Helena.