Saturday 29th Jan by Nat x

“Today was the best day of my life!”.  I think this is now the expected catch phrase at the end of each day. Sometimes it’s hard to even remember how each day started by the time we have finished the activities for the day. Today was no different to any other day, I think it was the best day of my life.

We start each day in Cape Town with a buffet breakfast ,telling the boys and ourselves to eat as much as we can so that we can skip lunch and save money. Fortunately we all consume enough calories in one sitting to get us through breakfast, lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, we still eat lunch and dinner. The food is fresh and beautiful and luckily we can drink the water here so we eat lots of fruit and salad ingredients. Sadly, my dream of looking like Angelina Jolie by time I arrive in the Maldives is fading by about half a kilo a day.

By half past eight we were on the road to Table Mountain. The trip only took about 10 minutes by car. From the carpark we loaded onto a Gondola and took a very steep, scary trip to the table top. The views from the top were spectacular as expected. One thing we have noticed here is that there are no queues anywhere for anything. It makes life very easy.

The highlight of the day was our trip out to the Stellenbosch wine region, even though no wine was seen, tasted or purchased.  We went to a winery named ‘Spier’. This is where the Cheetah outreach programme is located. Incredibly for around A$100 / R330 we were able to experience a Cheetah encounter with a mature male cheetah named Joseph. We all patted him and had plenty of photos taken with him. What an unbelievable opportunity. I felt like a ‘Getaway’ reporter.

After another beautiful lunch (yes more food), we then participated in the Eagle/birds of prey encounter. And yes, we touched, held and patted many different birds of prey. I don’t particularly like birds but I found this experience to be quite incredible.

Wearily we drove home past all the ‘Townships’ (a.k.a. slums/shanty towns) and took amazing video footage of them as well as some great photos. The segregation between black and white is really evident in Cape Town. Most black working class people live in shacks we wouldn’t house our  animals in. Most white people live in mansions, many three and four stories high, overlooking the ocean, the rest live in apartments overlooking the ocean.

For those of you that know me well, this next paragraph will come as no surprise. The final highlight of my day was finding a laundromat approximately 100metres away from our apartment that will wash and dry a 5kg load of clothes for R45/A$7. I’ve spent many hours handwashing etc. So this will now make my final days in Cape Town the best days of my life.  Nat x