27 March, Cape Town

What a wonderful weather it is now in South Africa. Since Saturday 23 March we are in Hout Bay in a beautiful country house. Like many of the houses here in the area, this house also sits behind a fence covering ten other estates. There is a barrier and you just come in with your fingerprint, really! The House is really beautiful, built in Italian style (although it is thought by the Southafricans to be French style) with an 18 m long swimming pool and fully equipped. There is a gardener (who comes every day), a concierge (who lives in the building and turns out to be a music producer) and a housekeeper (who cleans up our mess every day). We are having a bad time nuh?

Saturday Lisa, Tamara and I drove to Bloubergstrand for some nice pictures of Table Mountain and Cape Town.

On Sunday we had a barbecue with the whole family and a lot of meat was eaten and a lot of pictures made. Before that, Farrah, Niels and I drove to Cape Town to hand in the rental car to AVIS. After that te did grocery shopping for the braai.

Monday Tom and I rented two bicycles on which we drove to Chapmans Peak. That’s a beautiful ride by car, let alone by bike! One needs to go 160 m up and then popping down on a carbon race bike with tyres of 2 cm wide. We were both completely exhausted at the end so we did it again on Tuesday with an additional 1 km swim at the house. Today we drove the pass to Llandudno and we returned the bikes. We walked home (4 km) and Tom swam again a kilometer. I slightly less! At the descent I reached a speed of 72 km/h.

Farrah and Niels tasted wine in Stellenbosch yesterday and came back very cheerfully. Today they did yoga.

Tonight we will eat out in Hout Bay with the whole family. The photos follow later.