Hello loved ones.
Its been almost two weeks since we last spoke, and thus I have a fair bit to catch you up on.
I last left you in Swakopmund - an old Germany colonial town in Namibia. Aside from the sandboarding in Swakopmund, we also spent a couple of days exploring the town. Swakopmund is a pretty seaside town with some impressive buildings and enticing bakeries. There was only one problem with Swakopmund, and it is a problem that is shared by Germany. There were just too many Germans. Luckily, we didn't go to the beach and therefore avoided any possible towel-on-sunbed related incidents.
From Swakopmund to Cape Town we stopped off at various different places, although none of them interesting enough to warrant their own paragraph. The first was Fish River Canyon- allegedly the second largest canyon in the world. It was massive. Another stopover was in Stellenbosch- a town that exists primarily for its production of wine. Its wine-tasting tours are world-famous. I didn't do the tour though.
We finally arrived in Cape Town on Saturday and that marked the end of our 5 week trip with Kumuka, and the beginning of our 5 week independent travel through South Africa.
In the 4 days that we have been in Cape Town we have packed a lot in. We reached the summit of Table Mountain- aided in only the slightest by a cable car- on Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday we jumped in a hire care with a couple of friends and drove around the peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope - the most south westerly point on the African continent. I've now done the big two: Ive reached the highest point in Africa and the most south-westerly point. What else is there to do?
We also stopped off to visit a penguin colony. Apparently, this species of penguins used to be called "Jackass penguins". I didn't understand why though, as I didn't catch them doing any death defying stunts - they couldn't even fly!
On Monday we travelled to a small town called Gansbrai with the sole purpose of going shark cage diving. Thats right, we only bloody swam with Great White Sharks! As we floated in a cage, just over the side of the boat, the crew attracted the sharks to the boat. When they approached, someone would shout "Down!" and you would have to pull yourself underwater to see a 5m long Great White swim right next to you! On a couple of occasions they even attacked the cage, which was a little scary to say the least.
I thought it was ironic that normally it is humans seeing animals in their cages but this time it was as if the sharks were coming to see us in our cage. I reckoned the sharks would have been thinking how sad it was to see humans in captivity and not in the wild. I thought that was a pretty humorous observation. Apparently I was just being silly.
Yesterday we took the short ferry trip over to Robben Island. Robben Island was used as a prison during the days of apartheid and was where they kept the political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela. Despite popular belief, the island is not named after the Dutch winger and nor is it the sidekick of a bigger and more popular island callled Batman Island. That joke wasnt well recieved first time round, so hopefully its wit will come across better over the internet.
As for today, Im having a pretty Jewish day. I had a shawarma for lunch and will be heading off any minute now to have a look round the biggest synagogue in South Africa and the holocaust museum. Bet you're jealous.
Lots of love
Jonny x
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