Bad news first: my computer died! I am gutted. It wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t in the midst of finishing revisions on my 2nd novel!!! Ugh, Doctor O’Neill tried to fix it—thank god I travel with my very own computer tech consultant—but it was unfixable. Grrr! I hate computers!

But onto the fun stuff: Friday night we went to dinner at our good friend Amanda’s sister’s house. She and her husband have a fleet of luxury cars that they rent out to visiting high rollers and film crews etc, and they have a fabulous house! They designed it themselves, with one especially unique (some might say bizarre) attribute: every bedroom is fitted with a bathtub and toilet — IN the room! No wall, no curtains, just potty, tub, flat screen TV, and luxe bed! It seems kind of cool, but Amanda pointed out that it’s a bit odd when you need the toilet and someone could walk in at any moment! Haha. But we had a great time at dinner. It always makes you feel at home when you can have a home-cooked meal with good friends.

Saturday night we went to a lovely hole-in-the-wall Mozambiquan restaurant in Muizenberg called Carla’s.

Most of the businesses and shops have locked gates, so we rattled the gate, hoping to get in. The proprietor (Carla) saw us, but made no effort to buzz us in for about 3 minutes. We felt like total idiots just standing outside the restaurant, hoping Carla would let us in!:). She finally seated us, left for another 15 minutes or so, then came back to the table and said, “I’m basically a port place. Do you like port?” Since it was a restaurant, I couldn’t believe they only had port — what, no food? So we said, “Sorry? What’s that?”, thinking maybe it was a Mozambiquan delicacy. She looked at us like we were crazy. Turns out, in her Afrikaans(scratch that, I just read that she’s Portuguese) accent, what we thought was “port” was actually “prawns.” Go figure. I’m allergic to prawns, but Andy said they were good. The highlight by far was the fact that Carla’s two daughters (about 8 years old) were the servers. So adorable! We gave them a big tip.

While Alex is writing a long welcome-to-our-blog and here-we-are-in-South-Africa post, I thought I could jump in with some photos of the beasties we’ve encountered. (By the way, if you are a friend of ours, you may get to see a few more pictures in our Flickr stream if you add us as a contact than you would as the general public.)

On to the bugs. First up is a huge cockroach we found in the office. We thought about killing it, but we know how messy that can be and besides, it looked like it was big enough to fight back. There’s an awful lot of detail on the hairy legs. I hope he didn’t come back and scare the office manager!

Next, we have a centipede of some sort (or perhaps a decipede would be more accurate since it has about 32 legs). Alex spotted it under the dining table, and trapped it under a glass, but it was upside down and apparently they can’t breath if they are upside down. We put it outside where it was moving but not very much, and when we came back later it was gone. A tasty dish for something bigger, perhaps.

And finally a mammal. We went down the cape to Kalk Bay, a fishing village about ten minutes away from Muizenberg with a beautiful working harbour. This seal was sat next to a fish-gutting stand, looking decidedly lazy. There was another seal in the water outside the harbour diving very successfully for fish.

That’s all for now – hoping to catch some monkeys, baboons and penguins before we split for the Eastern Cape.

We’re in Cape Town!

So much has happened already I hardly know where to start. It’s a bit sureal. Cape Town is not at all what you think of when you think of “Africa” — at least not what we were thinking of when we made the decision to move here for a year! We’ll be staying at the ASAP flat in Muizenberg for at least three weeks, just getting settled and waiting for Priscilla (the head of ASAP) to return to CT and caravan with us up the Eastern Cape to our new home town, Mount Frere.

Alright, what can I tell you so far… We’ve been swimming in the Indian Ocean (and by swimming I mean jumping in and out in less than 1 minute). Winter is warm in Cape Town, but it ain’t THAT warm! Overall the temp has been somewhere between 15-25 aka 55-70 degrees. It’s been pretty windy and today it rained, forcing us to cancel our proposed hike up Table Mountain.

Probably the coooolest bit of news is that we bougth a car already! Yeehaw! We test drove about 3 cars (okay, Andy did. I was scared I’d crack under pressure w/ the whole left-side-of-the-road thing). Most of the cars on Gumtree are sputtering peices of junk, but we ended up with a 1998 Ford Fiesta, and the best part is … drum roll please … it’s pink! We can always spot it in the parking lot at the Tokai Mall, which is nice. (And yes, we have already been to the mall. Like, 3 times.)

We call her the Mauve-a-tron.

• Pro’s about the Mauve-a-tron: she’s pink and she seems to run pretty well.
• Cons about the Mauve-a-tron: the emergency break doesn’t work. That might be less of a big-deal if we didn’t have to park on a hill. Good times. We’re going to have a mechanic look at it next week.

But until then, we make a very happy family.