Hi to all our Family and Friends

Here's the latest on Michelle and Andrew's trip.

We are both still in remarkably good heath and I've even lost a bit of weight which is good but so has Michelle which is not so good as there's little enough of her as it is. So far we haven't had any major disasters though it was a great relief to hand back our loyal hire car after 58 days. The constant worrying about being car-jacked and losing everything in the car (i.e. everything we have) was getting a little wearing. Especially in Cape Town where there are 9 murders, 31 armed robberies and 32 car thefts per day! We are getting very used to guards and razor wire everywhere. We were robbed a couple of weeks ago but it wasn't too
serious; a troop of hungry baboons ambushed us while we were having lunch and stole our loaf of bread. The joke was on them however, because the bread was pretty stale!

We are currently back in Cape Town after spending the last few weeks of our African leg in Namibia. It's a county of Rs; Rocky, Rough Roads, Roosters.

We are looking forward to slowing down the rate of travel too. We did about 4000km in the last few weeks in Namibia.  Only the major road through the centre of the country and a few side roads are bitumen. Most are gravel ranging from very poor as in you shake to bits at 30 km/h to excellent i.e. you can do 80 km/h+. Hence the Rough Roads.

In Southern Africa there are also lots of appalling drivers and unroadworthy cars as well as in Namibia, few guard rails and 120km limits and 0.08 BAC in countries where alcohol is way too cheap and too many people who have nothing else to do.

The "Roosters" comes from the habit of the Namibian National Park staff of keeping chickens. This is fine except their quarters are usually very close to the camp grounds and their roosters like to let you know dawn is coming. The trouble is they do so for about 3 hours before the event itself.  Fortunately we have become fairly heavy sleepers and aren't greatly disturbed. Made a change from the roaring lions and hysterical hyenas at Kruger at any rate.

This ability also comes in handy when the temperature goes close to or even below zero. Our last camping night in Africa it was still only 4 degrees at 10 am and we have had the car and tent covered with frost. Fortunately our Fairydown Cobra sleeping bags (available from "It's Extreme", 32 Spence St Cairns there you go Roy!) are designed for this and their myriad of fancy features have all come into play. Our other gear is also performing very well under a solid workout. Especially the clothes. When you only have 4 sets they each get a fair bit of wear and with all the Acacia's in the Thornveld tear?.
(Andrew forgets to mention that his pants have been falling down of late Michelle)

The final R of Namibia is "Rocky". This is a bit of an understatement as Namibia is the land of rocks. We think we've seen every type of rock and geological formation in most colours there. A lot of the time there is very sparse vegetation and it's pretty well flat but the mountains and the rocks everywhere are all amazing.

We have also seen the famous red sand dunes and Canyon at Sessreim, watched the Flamingoes (Greater and Lesser) feeding (and jiggling their knees) at Walvis Bay; seen the thousands of Cape Fur Seals at Cape Cross where the Portuguese planted a Cross in 1492; been to Etosha to see simply vast numbers of animals on the open plains and at the waterholes by night and day; visited the second biggest canyon in the world at Fish River; seen bushman painting and carvings from 2000 to 6000 years old and sampled the German colonial architecture and flavour of the country 50% or more of tourists are still German.

Unlike SA (45 million), Namibia is sparsely populated (1.5 million) mainly due to the lack of water and firewood in most places. It's also about as poor as SA with many people relying on donkeys to pull home made carts for transport or cramming up to 20 people into a small ute (or bakkie in SA terms). On some days we were hailed more than once to come to the rescue of people broken down or simply run out of food and water. It as always gratefully accepted and we felt a little guilty that even an apple was seen as a great gift when we had so much.

While we were here the Solar Eclipse happened in full in Zambia. We saw a partial eclipse near Etosha and while driving along for an hour or so you could feel the sky dimming until it was like wearing very dark sunglasses then come back to normal. Luckily it was in the middle of the day and so fairly obvious.

For those keeping score Michelle has taken 6 rolls of pictures and I have taken 28. There will be one hell of a slide show when we get back but I won't see them until then as they are Kodachromes and have to be sent home for processing.

We've been staying with Melissa again in Cape Town, which is great. When we first came it was pretty rainy and we weren't too impressed. 2 of the only 4 rainy days we've had in Africa were had right here. This time though the Weather Gods have smiled upon us again and we managed to get up Table Mountain and Signal Hill on a clear day. Until a storm cloud came over and dumped a bit of rain on us which in itself was quite amazing to see. The next day was perfect and we went out to the Cape of Good Hope and climbed Cape Point and Diaz Point to see the two lighthouses and amazingly steep cliffs where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. Today we resorted to a little retail therapy and coffee shop hoping in a glitzy shopping centre here.

Our next stop is England where we are looking forward to some better safety and security and the smaller scale of the place. We also catch up with family there including Michelle's mum, Kathy. On the down side it will more crowded and be a lot more expensive there. We can really recommend it in SA for anyone trying to stretch their travel budget. At this time of year it's also not very busy and the weather is generally good.

Hopefully the UK will provide cheaper and faster Internet access though I think we will just get more places and faster. We'll send you an update from the Mother Country when we have some news to report. In the meantime we will try to reply to your individual emails one by one while here. Stay well and please keep any postcards you get as it will be interesting to read them ourselves when we return in December (we being the ego maniacs that we are).

We are missing you all (well, some of you anyway) and hope that things are well at home.