December 8th

Awoke around 02 am – UGHHH! Load-shedding. It only lasted 30 minutes, but it was enough time to just really be back to sleep, to be woken again! I will not miss this about South Africa!! I did go back to sleep, but Jeff said he did not.  🙁  We were up and around by 07. We showered and walked to the local store in search of breakfast stuff. [On the way I saw couple of “my” purple trees (Jacaranda). I will miss them – I have been seeing them since Madagascar to Reunion and now here.] We bought our items and went back to our place. We had chocolate chip yogurt (not as sweet as I had expected it to be); and some rendition of what they called scones (very dry). We used the last of our apricot jam and nutella – it helped some.

We loaded up and said goodbye to our hosts, nice people, Ian and Ella. Now we hit the road. Today, we complete our trip along the southern part of South Africa, and drive rest of the way back to Cape Town, as tomorrow we fly out. We did do the whole of their route 62. We took the Garden Route from Cape Town to near where it ended east. We were pleased with our trip. It has been wonderous to see all the terrain differences – mountains & hills to fields to coastline – all the while looking for Baboons, Ostriches, and any other wildlife. God’s handiwork is visible everywhere!!! Amazing!!

We arrived back to the Strand, our “old stomping grounds”, so to speak. We stopped at Nando’s for some roasted chicken with peri-peri sauce! Then we stopped and bought me a bag of coffee. Next and lastly, we went to a print shop we had been to before, to have our E-visa printed for India. Now we left the Strand for the last time!

We drove to our hotel at Cape Town Airport. We checked in (No problems this time. It’s the same hotel we had trouble with the very first night here.) and unloaded. We started some sorting for tomorrow, big flight day. We also figured out the mileage on both our car rentals. The first car we had for 30 days while staying in the Strand – had 1,150 miles. The second car rental we had for eight days and put 1380 miles on it! Crazy, fun, lot of driving these last eight days!!

Supper will be some cheese, a Biltong pasta, chocolate and our last South African Malbec! Will probably next be blogging from India!!