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