The final days

We are currently sitting at OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, waiting for our flight back to Heathrow.

After finishing up in the Western Cape we flew back up here a few days ago. After a last minute cancellation from our hotel in Pretoria we had to quickly rearrange two nights accomodation. We managed a real stroke of luck, finding a house which could be rented by the day (although the location, North of Pretoria, was not as good as the original hotel). Peter's asthma has not been good over the last few weeks and we had to take him to the medical centre at the airport when we arrived for 10minutes on a nebulizer (not a particularly cheap thing in an airport). So when we arrived at our fully equiped three bedroom house with lounge, private garden and full time maid we decided that we would spend a restful couple of days at 'home'. The furthest we managed to venture was to the local shopping mall, 3km away!

After a couple of days we left (much to the relief of the maid who I think was tired of cleaning up after Luke and Joe) and headed down to Johannesburg to visit some friends of ours from Guernsey who now live and work there - and have a 1 year old son (Daniel) who we had not met yet. They had just arrived back from three weeks in Europe and we had delayed our flight back by a couple of days to make sure we could see them. We hade a more active time (but also spent a fair bit of time enjoying their beautiful big garden). The highlight was a trip to a small game reserve where we got up VERY close to lions, giraffes and zebra. We also went to a kids play area at a nearby garden centre which had fairground rids, a train ride, sand pit etc. Earlier this evening Ronald cooked up a lovely Braai for dinner after which we sat out in the sun before we had to head off to the airport.

What a quick 10 months it has been (but looking back at the blog we did squeeze in a pretty good amount). We have a few weeks in Scotland to look forward to before we go back to the world of employment - in Jersey.

The rest of our photos from SA will be added here shortly.

Dave