South Africa - Part 1

Sorry this has taken so long! I was waiting for Peter to send an email to someone about something so that they got the email first rather then reading it on here! Anyway, I had to go to a conference in South Africa's Kruger Park so Peter joined me for a week's holiday before the conference. We arrived in Cape Town on a nice clear day and we were instructed to head up Table Mountain to make the most of the nice weather so off we went. This was the view from the top.

Our next few days were spent 'on tour'. I was really nervous about going to South Africa so we had pre booked all of our tours and accommodation before we went. Included in that was a day trip to the Cape of Good Hope and a wine tasting tour. One thing that stood out from the moment we arrived was the townships as seen below.

They are basically shanty towns crammed into whatever space they could find. The kids played on the side of the motorway on whatever space they could find.

On our first evening there we headed to the Aquarium and this was perhaps one of my favorite views...
The last winery that we went to on our wine tour had a cheetah outreach program that you could pay to pat the cheetah, scary but very cool! Just after this something caught this big cats attention and he was up on all fours looking a little scary.
On our day off we headed out to Robben Island which was very interesting. This was where Nelson Mandela spent some time in prison. The trip was hosted by ex prisoners and it was interesting to learn about the life they had in prison and how they coped. In the afternoon we went on a sailing trip and then happened upon a diamond shop, as you can see we looked pretty pleased with ourselves, I wonder why?
There are lots more photos here