Hiking in South Africa

So we were invited to this group called 'Slowly-up-the-hills' - you'd normally have to be above certain age (fifty to be exact) but we were made special exemption (maybe we look old enough or cool enough? who knows) either way, this is a really fun way to hike with group of people, take some photos and have some tea and snacks at the top.

We joined two Fridays.



First hike was to the Constantia heights. Constantia is famous for its wineries - though we didn't visit any - we did enjoy some very delicious South African wines after our hiking.

It was a short hike of about 1.5 hours. It was raining a little so a bit cold at the beginning but as we climbed up the weather got better and ended up very sunny n nice. 

All happy to be going for a walk!	Starting out....	Beautiful view
Pretty flower	At the top	Costantia Heights
Nice view	yay	Woohoo
More photos	Heading back	We are all tired!

After the hike, we all went for a cup of coffee and then to lunch at The Brasserie - which was really nice. Reasonably priced, HUGE portions & really delicious! And it is ok to doggy-bag here. 

The second hike (a week later) was a bit more challenging. It was supposed to be a hike to a cave. But we never found the cave. We ended up back tracking a couple of times.... so after about 2 hours of wondering around in the mountain, we decided we had enough - time for tea! So we found a spot and had our tea and snack. In total, the hike was about 3 hours.

We were exhausted....

Beautiful View	Photo by Richard	Weary Willy's
Getting lost	Hrmmm wrong turn?	Let's call this a cave

Then.....We arrived back to the car park to find that a couple of cars got broken into!! We were shocked!!! - it was not even a lunch time - car break-in in bright day light? And it looked like such a nice suburb... unbelievable..

Unfortunately, one of the cars that got broken into was our hosts'. They quickly cleaned the broken windows... The idiot thieves went through the glove compartment, under the seats etc. but they've only stolen something like 30 rand (under $3!) - they did not take anything else, just money.... we were glad to find our wines (for lunch) in the boot.

They had 24 hours to report the incident, so we decided to go for a lunch and some wine (priorities u know?).

We ended up having another amazing lunch at a restaurant called 'Italian Kitchen' in Tokai.

The car thing was unfortunate but everything else was great and again we were pleasantly surprised when the bill came after lunch - five people at a nice restaurant with a dessert - approx $50 USD. Amazingly great value....  I definitely like South Africa.