Week 1,2- Family visits and on to Cape Town

The trip to the southern tip of Africa is long. Two red-eye flights with a 9 hour layover in London. We could not keep our eyes open on the Underground train that took us into London Centre for a few hours of diversion. We napped under big trees and pigeons in Green Park, walked past Big Ben and snapped shots of ourselves in front of Buckingham Palace.

In Cape Town's airport as the winter sun was coming up, we were greeted by a charming young couple from Kenya living and working for a campus outreach program in Cape Town. They took us first for some groceries then to the home we were "house sitting" for a week here in this lovely climate.

Being here is a little surreal. Our first thoughts are to compare it to places we've been such as Monterrey California where winter is an absolutely beautiful cool temperature for wearing long sleeves and pants when overcast.

The guinea fowl in the park next door jolt us out of our jet-lag reverie now and then and the short day-light hours remind us we've dropped to the southern hemisphere.

We're staying in a fairly middle-upper middle class area, but we drove past a township area on the way from the airport which looked much like the pictures you've seen of hovels that many of the population live in. We've talked with a cab driver who reported that things have become much better here with people being much happier and helping each other out despite color. I wondered who's reality he was reflecting... Spending such a short time here, it is not easy to get a sense for what is reality. Perhaps because "reality" never is the same for everyone.

The World Cup game we attended was full of 63,000 plus fans, so many in bright and silly costumes full of laughter and hilarity and goodwill.  The teams' futures in the Cup were already decided so the game was " no-big-deal " since regardless of the outcome, Cameroon was done and Netherlands continued in the contest, but it was fun to see and it didn't seem to stop the fans from celebrating.

Today we got out on some lovely hiking on Table Mountain- waterfalls, beautiful foliage, views over the city.
The pictures start with our first week of travels from our home city in MN to our departure city in the east. We visited all of my (Corinna's) siblings as well as, my parents along the way.

New nephew in Illinois

Niece holding new nephew

summer storm across the plains of Indiana

Father's Day lunch with parents and youngest sister and fiance in PA

Entrance to World Cup 

We the fans

Netherlands vs Cameroon

Botanical Gardens view of the landmark peak

 a beautiful Waterfall