Jambo!
Well, we're here! Finally we can put impressions, smells and tastes to our overland African adventure and we don't have to rely on the guidebooks descriptions anymore!
We had a very relaxing time in Pretoria with Barry, Sheona and her parents as they helped us to adjust to being in Africa. It seems to be a place that gets under your skin like no other, there's something timeless about the landscape and the intriguing people that already it's pretty special to be here. Florent must think something similar because already on just the second morning of our stay, he woke early and turned to me with serious eyes and said : "what do you think about extending our trip by another couple of months?"!! We've hardly started, but he’s already keen to make it last longer!
After a few days in Pretoria and a visit to the cradle of humankind, we flew to the beautiful Cape Town. The LP says that this is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and we were determined to remain impartial when reading that kind of promise, but truly, Cape Town is amazing. The town somehow manages to blossom in between Table Mountain and the beautiful Indian ocean and some of the houses on the coast are incredible! Big Mama was waiting patiently for us there in her container and the reunion was joyful! (we were pretty happy to find her in the right port after the saga with our boxes to France!! ). We’re slowly working our way north to the Namibian border and our first real off-road & safari experiences. So far, we’ve found the travelling very easy, temperatures are freezing at night but pleasant in the day and the people are so keen to help. We’ve had people walking us to the ATMs just to make sure we can find them safely, another stranger called his own insurance broker to see if he couldn’t sort out some car insurance at mates rates for us, and every one that we’ve approached on the street has been amazingly willing to give us advice!
Highlights you can see on our photos have been the local ‘biltong’ – like jerky in Australia but much, much better that we’ve developed quite a taste for, the local Cape wines which we also quite like  The ingenious purchase of a plastic snake for the car that is apparently protection against baboons and thieves, the descent of Table Mountain where it’s like walking in the middle of the a giant exotic bouquet of proteas and other South African flowers, and the game between the ABs and the Springboks in a small fishing village’s pub which was pretty scary as were we surrounded by very vocal (eg. drunken) Afrikaans boks supporters!
We’re having a couple of technical issues that we’re sorting out today in Springbok – our gas bottle & cooker have Australian fixtures that can’t be filled here, our GPS won’t upload all the waypoints that I have so dedicatedly downloaded (so we currently only have borders and coastlines on our GPS which isn’t much help!!), and our dual battery has had it (meaning no fridge!!). Apart from all those wee technical issues for our luxury items, the car is going well and we’re loving the experience of being in a totally new environment and culture.
Missing you all in Melbourne so send us some news!
With love from Africa,
Pippa & Florent

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** actually, we’re sending you this email from Namibia where we’ve been for the last 3 days but we’re a bit late with the Internet access! Two new batteries in the car and a new gas bottle and cooker and everything’s working again  More Namibian news later.