Cape Town

Our trip is nearing its end, but that's not stopping us from enjoying our tourist status to the full.

On Saturday we braved the Atlantic to have an afternoon surfing and I have to say wet suits are one of the best inventions of ever. Professional surfers make it look so easy but really, it's not. There's far too much to think about, paddling to reach the same speed as the wave, waiting for the wave to catch you, attempting to stand up, then staying up - very complex opperation. But in 3 hours I managed to stand all the way up once and onto my feet but still clutching the board a fair few times. Really good fun, I'd definitely recommend it, even just to float about on a surfboard in a wet suit for the look!

We finally made it up table mountain yesterday, in the cable car. The cable car was made by a Swiss company and they did a great job, the car rotates 360 degrees so that wherever you stand you can see everything there is to see. The top of the mountain was ok, stunning views of cape town, but definitely table mountain is best viewed from afar to appreciate the whole thing.

A trip to Cape Town is not complete without a trip to the winelands and today was that day. We were taken to 4 wine estates and tried over 20 different wines and amazingly are still able to tell the tale. Our guide, Grant, taught us how to be proper wine snobs - so we are now qualified to swirl our glasses, smell the esters and savour the flavours. My favourites were the fortified wines and luckily we only tried 2 of them as they are stronger. One wine estate is just a hobby for a multi-millionaire and is capable of producing over 4 million litres of wine each year, but only produces about 1.3 million as he's not really interested in the profit side of things - oh to have that much money!

Tomorrow is our last full day in South Africa so we're planning to do shopping, pop into the Castle and have a whizz round Robben Island, no more adventure sports for us - as far as we know!

Last stop is Dubai for a few days to catch up with our uncle and some last minute tanning, then home we return to sunny, warm England.

Rx