Days 5 and 6

Day 5: Hout Bay.

Another cheat-y one of Cheryl's pictures with one of her climber friends in the background!

Day 5 has been a pretty chill day. We had breakfast in Simon's town before driving the scenic route to Hout Bay via Scarborough. The views were spectacular - really blue skies against massively rocky cliffs, we drove through Chapman's Pass which was unbelievably beautiful and part of the road is carved into the side of the cliff face!

When in Hout Bay we visited the harbour market and got some small things for my brothers and a bowler hat for myself as well as lots of lunch! We drove a different scenic route back to Cape Town with a quick stop at Llandudno for some gentle bouldering and a paddle in the toe-tingling cold water before going on to our backpackers in Observatory. Obs was a 'grey area' during the apartheid which meant all races could live together and although it is now more of a student-y area, there is still the most racial diversity here that I've seen round Cape Town.

Day 6: Kirstenbosch and Montague

The last of the cheating photos! This one with my Dad's x-mas cake.

Day 6 and today we meet back up with Cheryl. Me and Mum spent the morning at Kirstenbosch Botanical gardens (Mum was in heaven). A lot of the plants are very similar are similar or the same as ones in Cornwall and the layout compared to Cornish gardens was uncannily similar, it's easy to see why a lot of Cornish folk emigrated here. That and the tin mining!

We had lunch at the tea room before popping into Woolworths (the luxury!) to buy ingredients for a braai supper, an experience made slightly more stressfull because we didn't know what was already at the farm house where we were going to be spending the night: did we need charcoal or oil?! But once we'd got everything, we were off! The drive to Montague (where Cheryl's been rock climbing and where we're staying for a night) took about 3 hours and by a happy coincidence, the pair of us arrived just as Cheryl and the other climbers got back.

Once all-but-one of the climbers had left, me, Mum and Cheryl decided to try out the natural hot springs in the area. We were told a hotel had been built up around it but we could get a day pass to go in. We were all expecting something along the lines of a hot rock pool with a hotel in the background, instead we were met with several outdoor swimming pools of varying temperatures, presumably filled with the naturally hot water that had then been chlorinated. It was a little disappointing but apparently there's another one in the middle of nowhere an hour or two away so we might try that one tomorrow.

Once back at the camp site/guest house, we fired up the braai pit (with the wood they provided) and had a fantastic meal of veg kebabs (cooked without oil because we didn't buy any) followed by roasted peaches soaked in amaretto with raspberries and goats cheese on top, because my mum doesn't know how to slum things!