Janice's Visit and lot of pictures!

So we still haven't figured out how to post pictures in the order that we want, so here are a bunch of pictures in not particular order. My friend Janice came to visit from the States. She was our first visitor and she set high standards for the rest of you. Check out the picture of the loot she brought us....millions and millions of chocolate bars, coffee, and music. She is now officially our new favorite person. Actually, we have to make a public thank you for the nice packages that a lot of you have been sending. It is always fun to get mail, and with little pieces of home in them. Thanks for everyone that thinks of us. And thanks, Janice for coming to visit and bringing so much great stuff.

Anyways, the day Janice arrived is the day that I woke up with a swollen lip. That picture is in there somewhere. I think it must have been a bug bite. I am just glad that the swelling went down relatively quickly because I looked scary.

We had a great time with Janice. We hiked to the actual top of Table Mountain for the first time, as well as all over the mountain on multiple different days. We felt pretty tough because it was a long hike until this 80 year old guy passed us on his 8 and a half hour circuit hike that he does twice a week. Then we felt not so tough. We found a cave that you can explore and go through. It was a little creepy and kind of an adrenaline rush because we weren't super prepared for it in terms of batteries in the flashlight--if they had gone out we would have been stuck. But we got through it and you actually had to crawl out of the last part. There is a picture of the part we exited where we crawled out. I am so glad that our batteries worked. We visited the penguins again and I included more pictures because they are just adorable. We went wine tasting which was great. The winelands here are beautiful and the wine is amazing and best of all--cheap. We did a wine/chocolate pairing at one of the wineries which is, in my opinion, how all wine tasting should be done. Janice is a more fun photographer than us and took pictures of some of the random things throughout the area. I have included some of her pictures--my personal favorite--the beaded elephant with the gigantic balls. You have to wonder why they felt compelled to include those things. They had to have added a few hours of extra work. But definitely worth it for the few minutes of extra giggles that we got. We also ate some really good food. I have pictured some of the best duck ever.

Janice, unfortunately had to leave us and go back to the real world, but we had a great time with her.

In other news, we are headed up to Lesotho in a few weeks and then will return to Cape Town via the Garden route. I am really excited to get out of the city for a while and see some of this country. We will have loads of new pictures from that trip, but in the meantime we are living a regular, boring life with nothing much interesting to post. It's kind of nice.

Red and Blue Disa Orchids

We have recently been out Orchid hunting and have seen both the red and blue Disa Orchids around Cape Town. The reds we found on table moutain as well as a samll stream locally. The blues were both on table mountain and another local mountain. They grow in completely different spots and seem to bloom just a few week apart depending on what area. The reds are much larger than the blues, and a much truer color. the blues have shades of periwinkle and levendar and are not a true blue blue, but close. the blues are cute and are scattered around a bit more than the red. The reds tend to clump together.

What else is new? Nothing much, just business as usual. We head to the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho in April, just a month away. We will retunr home on a scenic route, and this will be our first big "vacation" in South Africa. Lesotho is a small independant kingdom within South Africas borders. It is high altitude and supposedly there are some amazing mountains and waterfalls. There is also supposedly some very good trout fishing in Lesotho.

Megan is in full swing at school and has made some young friends so we feel cool and young too. It keeps us in trouble. We don't get into enough mischief here since we don't know younger people. Its been nice being young and social again.

Thats all for now, enjoy!