Photo shows the iconic Table Mountain in sunny conditions from the city waterfront on Table Bay. It was the only time we saw the top of the mountain during our Cape Town visit.

We are back on Sundari in the Gold Coast's Broadwater after a too short trip to South and East Africa. The reason that the trip was so short was because we expected to be called up for a citizenship ceremony at some point. Our expectation was proven correct when we got an email in South Africa announcing the ceremony taking place in Cleveland, the Redland City Council's main administrative town. We are now Australian citizens and were given two small native trees at the ceremony to plant in our land on Lamb Island as a souvenir!

In the end we spent a very enjoyable 3 weeks in South Africa and 1 week each in Uganda and Tanzania.

Could we have spent longer? Of course, but the sort of trip we did in each country certainly wasn't cheap, especially as we opted to stay in guest houses and hotels where we could, rather than cheaper campsites as we have done so frequently in the past. East Africa is particularly expensive and we would have spent a lot more if we had been there any longer.

The main aim of our trip was of course to see as much of Africa's mega fauna as we could, while keeping an eye and mind open to what's happening more broadly, socially and politically, in the countries we visited.

We were able to shorten the time in the air on the way to Cape Town by spending two nights in Perth on the way from Brisbane, where we caught up with Alison's old school friend and fellow sailor, Clodagh, who met us half way between Albany and Perth in the little village of Williams (!) We still felt tired and jet lagged by the time we landed in Cape Town.

Cape Town was inspiringly beautiful with its grand mountainous backdrop and seascape. We weren't to see the full grandeur of Table Mountain until the second afternoon when we made the obligatory pilgrimage by ferry to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent his Apartheid era internment years. We enjoyed the road journey below the towering cliffs and the precipitous peaks of the Cape Range to the Cape of Good Hope, spotting eland, bontebok, zebra, ostrich and a lot of baboons along the way as well as dropping in on the sadly vanishing colonies of African penguins.

From Cape Town we stuck to the main coastal route, deviating from the well maintained N2 highway whenever we could. We drove through the Overberg, the little quaint Afrikaaner town of Swellendam, the Bontebok National park and onto the Garden Route. This is an impressively beautiful coast with some of South Africa's best hiking possibilities in the coastal mountains and forests close to the crashing southern ocean swells.

We had a 2 day stopover at Addo Elephant National park near Port Elizabeth which was our first real encounter with significant megafauna, especially large numbers of very friendly elephants (!) before continuing our coastal adventure through the Eastern Cape towards KwaZulu Natal and Durban.

Our last week and a half was divided up between the lovely St Lucia Estuary and iSimangaliso Reserve, Hluhluwe / iMfolozi Game Reserves and Kruger national park. It probably wasn't the ideal time of the year to visit these well known reserves as the wet season had not long finished and the grass was quite long, making it more difficult to spot animal life much beyond the fringes of the roads. We still saw heaps of megafauna, however, and it was difficult to say whether this was any less of a trip than the one we did in 2012, when we visited the same three places (plus a few more we didn't have time for this time).

As for South Africa and its inhabitants, at no time did we feel unsafe, although because the country has a reputation for petty and sometimes violent crime, we did take precautions. Everyone we met was friendly and pleasant, whatever their background. SA has huge socio-economic problems and the gap between rich and poor here is still staggering. The general election took place just after we left for Uganda and there was a lot of intense debate within SA on the TV and radio about which parties could be trusted to do something about the poverty in the country. The ANC in the end lost majority control after 30 years in power and has now decided to stay in government in coalition with 5 other smaller parties. We wish SA the very best in its endeavours to become a better place for all of its people to live in.



A snapshot of scenes across SA.
Top row: Mandela's Robben Island cell, Cape Point, Cape of Good Hope
Middle row: Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, Cape Range, Fish River mouth
Bottom row: eastern cape Xhosa country, East London beach scene, Umthatha, main town in Eastern Cape and Mandela's birth place.



Just some of the many birds we saw in South Africa, some close relatives of birds in Australia.

Top row: African penguins, darter, Goliath Heron
Middle row: Giant ground hornbill, Giant kingfisher, bee eater
Bottom row: Helmeted guinea fowl, Mouse birds, Verreaux's eagle owl.



The so called Big 5 together with hippos - our Big 6!
Top row: Kruger lioness, Kruger leopard, Addo NP elephants
Middle row: iMfolozi rhino, St Lucia hippos, Kruger rhino
Bottom row: Sabie elephants, Kruger hippo, Kruger buffalo



The not so Big 6 animals encountered in SA.
Top row: Croc and heron, greater kudu and inyala, Kruger giraffe
Middle row: Baboons, Samango monkey, Giraffes and zebras, Addo.
Bottom row: Tree squirrel, meerkat, wildebeest/gnu.