13/10/12 As it was Saturday and therefore no Spanish class, we had a big lazy breakfast together of fried eggs on toast and a cup of tea in the hostel, still finding it novel to have access to a kitchen to cook! We then got ourselves together and headed on foot to Parque El Ejido where we had heard there is a craft fair at the weekends. The walk down to the park was eerily quiet - it seems many locals do not go about on foot - but once we got to the park it...

06/10/12 We woke up early feeling the effects of jet lag but once we were ready Mario gave us a tour of the hostel. We were offered a different room upstairs but prefered our room downstairs so decided to stay where we were for the time being. We will move when a double room becomes available, as the upstairs is more of a hostel, with a kitchen, bathroom and lounge for guests whereas downstairs feels little like intruding on their home! We went out for a walk p...

The day began early as we woke up at 3am swiftly followed by a wake-up knock at the door from the hostel staff, always very kind of hostels to do this, we think. As we got ready the guy returned to tell us the taxi we had arranged had turned up. We hurried into the cold darkness and jumped into the waiting taxi for the 30 minute journey to the airport across a lit up Cape Town skyscape. Due to the early start the airport was dead and we waited in line for 45 m...

As we drove off for another pre-dawn departure at 6 we all drifted in and out of consciousness due to the early start. Our first stop was at a reasonably large town called Springbok where, seeing as it was the last travel day of the tour we treated ourselves to a Wimpy breakfast each! We set off again chomping on our takeaway, stopping at a few more petrol station / toilet combinations to break up the 680km (420 miles) journey south to Cape Town. Slightly l...

We got up early AGAIN and headed for the border via the usual shop stop. We were soon at the border and crossed into South Africa with unbelievable ease - probably the quickest border crossing we have done. It was only about a 15 minute drive until we got to camp, so we were pitched really early. It was a small camp area so all our tents were really close together but it seemed kind of fitting for our last night under canvas! We ate a delicious lunch of cou...