Travelogues # 2

World's Most Epic Run

I started at the light house on the Cape of Good Hope - where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet  - and got to run the trail over to where the most south western point of Africa is. It went over orange and purple and cream cliffs, through fynbos and sheer drops that plummeted hundreds of feet into coves of truly turquoise water, hopping over little rock dassies with their babies hiding under the boulders we jumped over, and ending up on white sand beaches where wild ostriches were eating a mere arm's reach away.

{arrows are pointing to the trail we ran - you can see where it runs along the cliff}

We watched wild baboons with their babies playing and elands in the rocky outcroppings nearby, and collected rainbow-coloured shells before we had a picnic watching the pounding blue surf of the vast ocean.

The whole time my husband and I ran the (way-too-short) trail I kept saying: this has got to be the world's most epic run and I just don't want it to end! Plenty of slower trekking tourists raised their eyebrows at us running past them on the path, but there was no way I couldn't run it when presented with the opportunity. It was completely, flabbergastingly stunning.

Swimming With Penguins

This morning the kids got to go swimming with South Africa's wild penguins at another beach. My son has been talking about this coming up for months. He came home elated and freshly blase' about getting to be in the water with these amazing creatures. As I was quizzing him about it afterwards he said: "Guess what?! We passed the black shark flag up, too!"

Which in this part of the world means the Great Whites had been spotted.

And Then There Is Sossy

Just as wonderful has been my seven year old boy falling completely and besottedly in love with his grandparent's dog. They have become inseparable. She sleeps outside their bedroom door, was read to at 3 am when jet lag was bad, comes every time he whistles for her and plays hours of hide and seek and looking for snakes in the yard.

He told me the other day: "Mom, it's so nice to play with somebody who wants to play all of my games!"

Jet lag, airplane-caught sniffles (my third round of antibiotics this season is a bummer) and some sunburn notwithstanding, it is strange for us to be thinking of Christmas only twelve days away here in the stunning weather and views of the southern hemisphere. But we are soaking up family time, decorating Grandma's tree and lighting candles for Advent altogether. Only now with Chapman's Peak and Table Mountain in the background and watching surfers catch the evening waves.

The Grandparents are spoiling us entirely rotten.