After a night staying at a citrus farm in the beautiful Cederberg mountains and climbing the mountainside to find cave paintings (which we finally found when it was going dark and we could only see them by the light of the camera flash - typical!) we got to Stellanbosch. Stellanbosch is in the middle of the South African winelands and it was only right that we do a bit of wine tasting! The group went to four vineyards and tasted well over 20 wines (none of which ...

Today we headed towards the Soussvlei dunes - the huge red sand dunes that Namibia is famous for. On the way we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn - which was almost as exciting as if we had crossed the equator... well almost... Camping over night we left camp at 5.30am to reach dune 45 before sunrise. We climbed the dune in half darkness and then sat down at the top to watch the sun come up (well Mark did, Kim gave up 2/3 of the way up and stopped to enjoy the vie...

En route to Swakopmond we stopped at Cape Cross to visit the seal colony. Cape Cross is where the first Europeans landed in Namibia in 16 something... I don't think the seals are aware of this fact but they have taken up residence in huge numbers. 100,000 seals make an awful lot of noise and an awfully bad smell!! Swakopmond itself is a small seaside German town - you'd think it was Europe not Africa! We spent 4 days here altogether, relaxing in a hotel room (bl...

We spent one fantastic day and night camping at a cheetah park in northern Namibia. The owners have three tame cheetahs living in their home and we started off by spending some time with them - stroking them and watching them get fed. Weirdly cheetahs purr when being stroked - you would not think it could rip your arm off with one bite! We then went out in a landrover to feed the wild cheetahs in the park - they have 14 living there and it was amazing to watch th...

After crossing into Namibia via at least 5 vetinary checkpoints where we had to get out of the truck and walk through foot and mouth chemical baths (with all our shoes!) we got to Etosha National Park. We spent two lovely days in the park doing game drives and spent evenings wrapped in blankets watching animals drinking from waterholes (including rhino!) Our first night in Etosha was very memorable in that we got hardly a wink of sleep as a lion decided to wake...