South Africa Day 4.

Torrential rain howling winds, grey skies and scudding clouds greeted us on our first day. After renting the car and heading out of Capetown we arrived at our first destination (image 1) about 100 km north of the City in a native reserve area, called Khwa ttu, that teaches about the San people, that were pretty well exterminated by the black tribes and the white settlers that moved into the Cape Region.

 Image 1: Our accommodation at Khwa ttu. Basic, but enjoyable but with an excellent restaurant.

On the way we had the chance of seeing our first yellow Protea, (image 2) as well as a large number of the birds that were resident in the reserve (image 3) and just “flying through” (image 4). The reserve area also has a number of animals (extirpated from this region) that were once seen here, including the impala antelope, eland and zebra (image 5). We went to be with overcast skies and with forecasts of more rain for the morning.

Image 2: The first yellow Protea (roadside stop, north of Capetown).

Image 3: Sunbird on an aloe at Khwa ttu.

Image 4: One of the herons in flight passing over our accommodation.

Image 5: Zebra at Khwa ttu.

Forecast still gloomy, but hoping for better weather tomorrow, the first of our planned flower days!

OK, so don't get excited. We are still in Waterloo, but leaving in the next 24 hours. I tried to get everyone onto an "automatic notification" if a new blog was posted (we are real beginners in all of this), so this is really "test #2". If this works OK then the NEXT one will be from Africa. Nothing like spending the next two nights in a plane while planet Earth is being peppered at the height of a large meteor shower)!

Just to give a slight flavour of what we are hoping to see, the first is from the flower area near Darling (an hour or so north of Cape Town), where we spent a couple of days when we visited in 2010.

These rather beautiful flowers are known as "wine cups", for fairly obvious reasons, and we hope to see them again on this visit (although at the moment the weather forecast is calling for rain)! They are part of the "fynbos" flora of the region, but more on this later.

The other things that we are hoping to see are the animals. When we head to the Kalgardi National Park in the semi-desert/desert of northernmost South Africa, there are a number of large cats (leopards amongst them) which we hope to see again. (This one was in Kruger National Park, and almost impossible to see at first, since they blend right into the background. Again (hopefully) more later!

Best wishes from us both! Alan and Anne

This is a test blog. It has no real content, but we just want to see whether you receive this safely. Our objective is to show you our travels in Africa and Madagascar later this month. We are trying to add one image.

Mandela's gold (from our last Africa trip in 2010)