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!

On the comeback

Hey Everyone! So we are finally settled in our new place. I start school tomorrow and I am really excited. Matt has been fishing so much that he actually said he thinks he needs a day off. We went camping up to a place north of us called Beaverlac. It was recommended to us by our American friends and then multiple other people said it was wonderful. So we got up there after a very arduous drive. The drive was so difficult we thought that surely there would be no one else as crazy as us to try to make it through this pass to a camping site in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't have been more wrong. Seems like there were at least 300 people there and I think they all just have really super nice camping gear and then hang out at their campsites admiring their nice things. The attraction of the place is a river that runs by it and it is really clear and pools as it moves down through these rocks. If you hike up the river, you can just go from pool to pool. So the pictures are from along that river. We tried to take one with the camera timer of both of us so Matt is caught swimming out to me while the picture was taken.

The picture of the two of us close up is from today. And it is showing that this country can't keep us down. We decided that we would go orchid hunting today and so we took off out of the city towards Betty's Bay in search of the elusive disa orchid. Well, since it has been about a month since we've had any bad luck, we should have known that some was coming our way. In trying to prevent this, we took the car in the have it serviced which ended up being $300 of little repairs here and there. But hey, we figured an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Anyways, one of the things they did was change the brake pads. Back to today...as I am driving down the highway at 70mph the brakes on the car gave out. So we didn't make it orchid hunting. Luckily after our last car problems we decided we should invest in a good insurance company...so they had a tow truck come pick us up. The picture of us from today is when we were at a rest stop waiting for the tow truck to come. See the big smiles on our faces....it's because this sort of thing can only be funny now. So here we are without a car again....

Our new place on the golf course!

It's been a while since we put up a post, but that's because we don't do that much that is very interesting. Unless you want to see pictures of the millions of fish that I have caught. Matt only wishes he was so good. We did move into a new place. We are now officially country clubbers. We live across the street from a golf course and have a spectacular view of the golf course and then Table Mountain behind it. We have started wearing a lot of white and drinking cocktails all the time. We have lots of country clubbing friends. Now if only we could play some golf. So here are some pictures of our new place. We really like it overall. Number 1 fun thing is that we have an oven and I have been going crazy baking. And our landlord is this nice lady who lives next door with her mother and there are 2 people that work here during the day and one other guy that lives downstairs. I like to call it our little commune. We also have house geckos that come out at night. The are adorable little creatures. One of the pictures is from the golf course of our house. We have a key so we can get onto the course and walk around. Then one of the pictures is of the mountain at sunset from our porch.

In other news, Matt got me a job at an art gallery. Basically I just babysit the place because the owner is gone on vacation. I invite all the art gallery people over to hang out on the golf course and have cocktails. I start school next month and I am really excited to have some responsibility. The free time has been nice, but with no money, there is a limit to what we can do.

Matt has been fishing a lot and taking a lot of guided trips. He is making us some money. I call him Daddy Warbucks.

We really missed being home and Christmas. It was strange having Christmas in the summer. A big huge meal isn't as appetizing, or fun to cook, in the summer, but we toughed it out. We hope everyone had a merry christmas, and will have a happy new year.