First impression of South Africa

Well this will be short and sweet as we have had a long day.

We first arrived in Cape Town on January 24th with Kelly's friend Tony greeting us at the airport. We quickly made our way to his home and had a few refreshments as Kelly and him caught up on old times. Tony and his wife, Janine, took us under their wing and showed us all around Cape Town for 3 days including thier cousins birthday BBQ up in the hills. After many bottles of wonderfull South African wine and amazing meals, at favorite dining spots, we said goodbye and headed for our hostel. There we met back up with Andrew and Kristy, who we originally came to South Africa with, and began our trip as tourists. We toured around the city hitting main shopping markets and beaches where we found the UV index to be 10 fold what it currently is in Kuwait. Long story short; 5 days into the vacation and we all resemble Lepers.
On January 29th we boarded a plane for Johanessburg, picked up our rent a car (2009 Mercedes Benz) and headed for our African Safari in Kruger National Park. This was a trip non of us will ever forget. 3 nights, 4 days, Lions (male,female,and cubs), Giraffes (almost stepping on the hood of our Mercedes) and Rhino's in the distance, among others, we had the time of our lives. Hippos grunted and lions roared through the night was we layed down to rest in our permanent standing canvas tents. YUP...AMAZING! We are now back in Cape Town after a 2hr flight from Johannesburg. We landed this morning at 10am so Kelly and I quickly cleaned up and caught a ferry to Robben Island, Andrew and Kristy headed for the beach. Robben Island is 10km off the coast of Cape Town and the site where the famous Nelson Mandela was imprisioned for 18yrs. We had a wonderful walk-through tour by an ex-inmate and got to see Nelson Mandel's cell. A pretty amazing thing to see and I'm sure you can imagine what it meant to a heartfeld history teacher like Kelly. Besides her now cherry colored back Kelly thought it was the best tour she had ever been on in her life. Yes the weather was hot and Kelly was sunburnt when we got back. I even caked on SPF 100 on her back while on the ferry....IT DIDN'T WORK!
Tomorrow we will go on a Winery Tour and visit a Cheetah outreach center on the way back. This will give us an up close and personal look at cheetah's as we were robbed of them while at Kruger. Not to mention an up close and personal look at the bottom of free bottles of wine. I promise i'll behave Mom.
In the coming days Kelly and I will climb Table Mountain, visit Wineries, and swim with Great White Sharks.
I will sign off for now.
We are back in Kuwait February 6th and should have the blog updated with pictures by the 7th.

Here's to diving with Great Whites..
R