Tuesday 22^nd July & Wednesday 23^rd July, 2014…….Walked and walked Cape Town and still the weather is great……saw the coloured houses…this is an area where the blacks used to live before apartheid when they all had to leave Cape Town and move to the outskirts…now  these houses are quite a tourists attraction in Cape Town as they have been restored and painted in bright colours……the architecture here is so British…hardly any of the Dutch/Cape architecture we were expecting and oh the English names not to mention the English stone churches….walking the beach pathway  the buildings are very tired…all apartment blocks and they would be the original ones in Cape Town….valuable real estate now but they all need a makeover…..some beggars but not a lot and there are signs saying “Support the Shelters, not Beggars”…..lots of very big SA women…they seem to carry the weight more than the men and have big bottoms…it just seems to be the body type they are but we think they eat  a lot of carbs in their diet too……KFC, as we said is everywhere here and they eat a lot of it….all through Africa the women have the most incredible hair dos…today we spoke to our maid at our guest house as she has a lovely hair style…she said it takes about 6 hours at the hairdressers to achieve these kind of hair styles and they leave them in for 2 to 3 months and they cost around 300 Rand (approx. US$30)…….reflecting on Table Mountain, so much in the cloud yesterday but cleared by midday so we were so lucky with our visit there on Monday…it is estimated to be the oldest mountain in the world at 260 million years with the Andes in South America 250 million years and the Himalayas much younger!!

Correction….on reading Mandela’s “Long Road to Freedom” Mandela was in prison when Botha came to power…Mandela tried to negotiate with him but no go and it was De Clerk that Mandela got negotiations going with the ANC and the government and it was De Clerk that released Mandela from prison and De Clerk and Mandela jointly shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993……

Tomorrow back on the truck and this will be more remote than the last leg so you may not hear from us for a while….thanks for your emails and comments and sorry we can’t reply to everyone but we reiterate, SA has the worst internet in the world…even their paper says so…….M & F

The coloured houses In Cape Town...

As above.....

Wash day in the coloured houses street......

Coloured houses street....Cape Town...

The only Dutch/Cape architecture on the waterfront with Table Mountain in the background.....

Woman washing herself in the water at Cape Town waterfront and then she got down on her knees and prayed....