I hope you had a
lovely Christmas. For me it has been a Christmas time filled with fun, food,
friends and fast moving water!
It all started with a very, very, very long train
journey from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri poshi in Zambia. We had
our tickets ready for our 2 nights in a 6 bed cabin.
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| There was a lot of people getting on the train. |
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| We are going to have fun in the Super seater carriage! |
When we got on the train
we were told our tickets were actually for a Super seater carriage (imagine a
sweaty, dodgy and crammed train carriage that was the Superseater!). We were all
trying to be positive but spending 3 days in that carriage was not going to be
fun.
Luckily there was a ‘First class’ cabin not being used on the train so we
manage to get a 4 bed cabin for the 5 of us to share (we made an extra bed on
the floor!). The first challenge of the move was get all our luggage through 12
moving carriages and small corridors. I had lots of bruises to show for it the
next days.
We spent a total of 53 hours on the train (well about 6
of them were spent just sitting at stations). There were many funny (but not at the time) moments on our journey
including watching the front of the train
drive off at the station and leave our carriage behind (yes they did
come back for us, they didn’t bother to tell us that they were going to change
another carriage!) and getting our passports stamped with our Zambian visas
whilst sitting on our beds in our pyjamas.
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| There was a lot of time for reading. |
Although we could wander up and down
the train and there was lots of beautiful scenery to look at, 53 hours was a
very long time to be on train, especially when the sleeping was not easy on a
very bouncy train! (Em, Kate and Jem, think night train
and 100 times worse!) We were very glad to reach Kapiri Poshi but not so happy to
spend the next 3 hours squashed into a very small space on a dala dala (small mini
bus). We were very grateful that Emma’s
(one of the other teachers) friend was there to pick us up from bus station and
provided us with a much needed comfy bed. I don’t think I have ever slept so
well! The lovely travelling was not over yet. The next day to had an 8 hour bus
journey to Livingstone which would have seemed long but actually past quite
quickly compared with the 53 hour train journey!
In Livingstone we stayed at a backpackers hostel. Spectacular
water was definitely a theme
to our stay in
Zambia.
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| Victoria falls |
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| Our sunset cruise along the Zambezi river in the rain. There wasn't much of a sunset but we did see some hippos. |
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| Yes you really can see me on the raft. |
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| This was the one occasion where I ended up in the Zambezi. |
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| I did a lot of holding on for dear life....... but I didn't go in! |
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| Can you see me? |
After
3 days in Zambia Suzie, Vicki and I flew to Cape Town. We hired a car and drove
to our first destination Muizenburg, on the coast just
south of the city. We could see Table mountain if you looked one way from our
little apartment and beautiful turquoise sea if you looked the other.
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| This was the beach about 20 steps from our apartment. |
On the first day we drove down the to Cape point with a
few stops on the way.
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| These African penguins only live here at Boulders Bay on coast of Cape Point. |
We caught a funicular up to the top of Cape Point. There were some amazing views.
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| The Cape of good Hope the most south western point of Africa. |
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| There were some spectacular waves as the cold ocean met the warm one. |
The next few days we travelled on the open topped double
decker bus to see the
sights of Cape Town itself. The highlights included:
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| ...........in a cable car! |
We went to the top of Table Mountain.......
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Camps bay a white sandy beach which was over looked by the
12 Apostles which are at the side of Table Mountain. |
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| It was quite cold! |
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| We visited one of the vineyards in the Constania region........yes I did do some sampling! |
The next day was Suzie’s Birthday so we started the day
by watching her drop from the sky with a parachute. We embarrassed her by
singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in the middle of a busy harbour at Kalk Bay and we were
joined by a few seals. In the evening we drove into the centre of
Cape Town to the V&A Waterfront where we enjoyed a delicious Game Kebab and
sang along to a Carol concert (with glowsticks!)
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We forgot the knife for the Birthday cake......the Tuppperware
box lid was a good substitute! |
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| My game kebab. Wilderbeast, Impala, Springbok and Kudu........Yum! |
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| Carol concert with glow sticks. It was very hot in the hats! |
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| The 14 wines made a light fitting grow out of my head! |
The second half of the holiday we spent travelling along
the Garden Route. After
a delicious breakfast at a local produce market we set off for Paarl. We
stopped in Stellenbosch for some Chrstmas shopping which was even more exciting as none of us had
been in actual shop for a very long time. We were now staying right in the middle of South African Wineland so it would have
been rude not to try the local produce. We spent the next morning at Fairview
Cheese and Winery. We sampled 14 delicious and 7 amazing cheeses.......there
were big smiles all round! Suzie and I decided we hadn’t had enough cheese so
lunch was also a cheese platter with 8 more cheeses to sample........I think I
nearly made up for no cheese in Mwanza and I had the most amazing dreams that night!
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| Yummy cheese! |
The Scenery along the Garden Route was stunning. For
most of the journey we were surrounded by beautiful mountains and there was even the occasional Springbok. The
next night we stayed in a lovely town called Montagu.
On Christmas Eve we traveled to the Ostrich farm in Oudtshoorn where we were going
to spend Christmas. We had gorgeous views from our little house including a beautiful sunset and some playful guinea foul.
Luckily it had a chimney so we were sure that Father
Christmas would find us so we hung out Santa hats hoping he would fill them.
Father Christmas did find us!
We had a very relaxing and extremely hot Christmas day! We went for a morning walk to see our neighbours the ostrishes and a swim in the pool.
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We were one of the only tables to actually wear our
cracker hats for our Christmas dinner. |
On Boxing day we returned to the coast at a place called
Knysna. It was lovely to
see the sea again and enjoy a lovely meal looking out on to the ocean.
We had a long drive back to Stellenbosch the next day as
we had to get up very early the next morning to catch our 3 flights back to Mwanza. We arrived safely
back in Mwanza at 11pm. We
definitely knew we were back in Tanzania as they decided to postpone our flight
back to Mwanza by 3 hours for no
reason!
Just to welcome us back to Mwanza we found that we had
mice living in the arm of one of our chairs. Luckily our Eskari (security guard) is
good at catching mice and it was certainly a back to reality very quickly! I
did have 4 parcels waiting for me when I got back so it was like Christmas all
over again in our flat.
I have had the most amazing adventures and I will definitely remember what I was doing at Christmas 2013. I've now got 5 days until we go back to school and the getting up in the dark starts again!
An advanced Happy New Year to you all!
And a little update on our resident mice... it had had babies in our arm chair!
