The Queen's Place is one of South Africa's biggest race meetings. The theme for the day this year was blue and white as is was sponsored by Drakenstein Stud and their racing colours are also blue and white. The history of the race dates back to Queen Victoria and there were a few celebrities around but the best known to us was Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. The race day was very good with many people at the racecourse and lots of stands, tents and...

Ant's is with us for a few days longer and arranged to "ride work" for a trainer called Mike Stewart. Mike had also asked Terry to drop of a 2 year old and as he was an ex colleague from many years ago wanted him to go for breakfast so we were invited along to. Riding work in South Africa is different to the UK. For a start the work is completely unpaid. The stable hands can exercise the race horses and most yards have local volunteers who do it just for th...

Justin, Anthony and their friends decided to spend New Year's weekend at South Africa's 7th largest dam, and we were invited. A dam in South Africa is probably a bit like what we would call reservoir and this one is known locally as Theewaterskloof (tier-varters-klurf). We drove there in the Bacci (backie) aka pick up truck with Justin and Claudia. The back was full of stuff including a mattress that was to be his and Claudia's bed for the next couple of nig...

Mike (aka Badger) and his family are in town! They are staying at the Twelve Apostles Hotel which is situated in Camps Bay behind Table Mountain. We borrowed Justin's car and drove there to pick him up allowing an hour and a half for traffic. Good job we did! The route we took goes right past the entrance to the cable car to get up the mountain meaning it was very busy. However, it's a really nice drive and the scenery is beautiful. Once over the other si...

Christmas Day we all woke up fairly early. Except Anthony who hadn't managed to get undressed or into bed the night before after going out with Sarah. We had breakfast and opened our presents in the living room with the whole family. We had decided to buy everyone a little present but were not expecting anything in return so it was nice to have some really nice present to open including a new rucksack for our travels and sleeping bags for our overland trip. ...