Anya Visser, the travel consultant with Pembury Tours who organized our trip, pre-arranged several outings for us over our 3-week stay in South Africa. Our first outing was a full-day auto tour of some highlights of the Cape Peninsula. Jacqui van Rensburg, a travel guide with a local Cape Town tour company (Wilro Cape Tours) was to be our driver and guide. Jacqui had also picked us up at the airport so we knew her. She picked us up right after breakfast and our first stop was Cape Town’s Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens.

Cape Town is a big city. Referred to as the “Mother City” by South Africans, it has a population of over 4.5 million (2020) and covers 950 square miles. It is the second largest city in South Africa after Johannesburg and the location of the South African parliament.

Our eldest granddaughter Caroline was thrilled to be back in “her city!” In the summer of 2019, she participated in a 6-week course/intern experience in Cape Town run through Workshop 17 and endorsed by her university. Not her first trip abroad but it was her first solo international trip. And she clearly loved…

My wife and I think of ourselves as travelers not tourists. Though we do enjoy visiting “must see” places in the places we visit, we do not have a checklist we must check off. We enjoy being someplace different, meeting and chatting with people, trying out the unique food of a region, and just living in a place we’re visiting.

South Africa has a bit of everything when you consider landscapes. It’s a beautiful country, but getting there from the U.S. can be a challenge. Unless you can find a direct flight (they’re available but none worked for us), it’s going to be multiple legs. Multiple LONG legs. We think our country is big but the African continent is huge!

A little over three weeks ago we left on a long-planned trip to South Africa with our two eldest granddaughters. I don’t post comments or images when we travel so I’m going relive our trip and share that with those who are interested now that we’re back home.