Ice skating in Cape Town

Team Lion cubs came second

Mother's Day was this year spent in Cape Town to attend South African Figure Skating Championships. Team Lion Cubs did very well and received silver for their best skate ever! 

Team posing in their Central Gauteng official outfit

We had a lovely four days in Cape Town with practices, the actual competition and some sightseeing. On Mother's day a group of mums and daughters took the local Metro rail to Simon's Town, where we had fish and chips at the jetty before heading back to the official opening draw. It was quite an adventure to use public transport. This is not something we can do in Johannesburg, unfortunately. 

One day S and I also drove to Table view beach for a fish and seafood lunch. The view was stunning!

Metro rail was not too bad!

Mother's Day in Simon's Town

View to Robben Island where Mandela spent over 20 years

Table Mountain in the background

Simon's Town

Take a break for a stress free life!

Kalk Bay from the train

Beach break on the Wild Coast

Kids had a weeklong March break a few weeks ago, which we used to further explore South Africa. First I flew down to Durban with the girls for an interprovincial ice-skating competition. The Lion cubs team had an awesome skate and secured the gold-medal and their place in the national skating competition taking place in Cape Town in May. 

A few days later the boys arrived by car and we continued further down on the coast to Ramsgate. We had rented a lovely house by the beach there and had lots of plans of exploring the area. But in the end we were lazy and spent most of the week playing on the beach, swimming in the pool, watching movies, playing games and visiting local restaurants. 

Synchro team Lion Cubs had a great skate in Durban.

The waves were really wild!

Sappi pulp mill in Durban.

Want to buy avocado, easy stop in 120 km/h?

Sugar cane plantations along the road.

Banana palms are used as road dividers.

South Africa has fantastic highways!

Township outside Durban.

Desert days in Namibia part 2

After four days in Swakopmund we jumped into our rented Ford Ranger and drove six hours south-east to Sossusvlei. The route was both desert and deserted, meaning very few cars, no people, no houses, but beautiful rugged landscape, and suddenly hot again now that the cold Atlantic wasn't cooling the air.

Views from the car, traditional wind pumps for pumping up water from wells. 

Sossusvlei lodge turned out to be a very nice lodge with tents to sleep in and a lovely pool. And to our big surprise the restaurant manager and head chef were from Finland!

 

View from our patio!


Typical picture from Deadvlei, a salt pan in the middle of the dunes.

The most photographed sand dune in Sossusvlei, the "Dune 45". We did not stop here, too many tourist buses.

"Big Daddy"- sand dune, we climbed this one instead!

Family picture from Deadvlei, it was HOT!

Desert days in Namibia 1

Sorry for big gap in postings! 

When school ended last December, we flew to Windhoek in Namibia for a week. It was a surprise to learn how few inhabitants there are in this country, only 2 million! The main airport felt tiny tiny after O.R. Tambo. 

Driving to the coastal town of Swakopmund, there were not many cars on the road. And the scenery was arid with desert, rocks, some mountains and again desert!

Swakopmund is a coastal holiday town/village, with very much German influence. Street names are German and according to the guide book you should be able to get around speaking German easier than English.

The setting is beautiful with the Atlantic Ocean on one side of the city and sand dunes on the other. Houses are low buildings and the feel is like being in a European small city on the coast of the Baltic
Sea! 

It was wonderful to be able to walk around the city centre and to restaurants in the evening, a treat we are not used to in Joburg.




We were expecting warm weather and lazy days on the beach, although we knew that the Atlantic is rather cold to swim in. We dreamt of catamaran tours watching dolphins, but the fact was that the weather was quite chilly and the wind hard, not inviting for beach time at all, especially since we didn't pack enough warm clothes!




Eating fresh fish and seafood was a treat, which we tried to enjoy as much as we could. This restaurant out on the pier was excellent, especially since we manage to book a table in a corner with uninterrupted sea views.

So we had to have some action instead to keep warm. We started off with quad biking on the sand dunes, which was great fun! As you can see from the pictures, the scenery is stunning and all of us enjoyed driving up and down hills and drifting with the bikes after getting used to them. K and J enjoyed it so much they went for repeats every day of our stay!

Sand boarding on the dunes is another must in Swakop. It reminded actually very much of snow games in Finland, with the difference that walking up the hill with the board was done barefoot and was even more exhausting than walking up the snowy slopes at home. Guess if we had sand everywhere after this! 




The hand sign on the last picture represents the shape of Namibia.