Jetlagging through a work day

Howzit!

So I just woke up, which startled me as I wasn't aware I'd fallen asleep at my desk. This isn't just your usual brand of lazy, though. I've been in Africa for the past 5 weeks, and I'm a little jet-lagged. Where's a fluffy pillow and a big mug of chocolate when I need it?

As for Africa, since I've completely failed to update this blog in the interim (not entirely my fault, as 2.5 of the 5 weeks were spent without the company of computer access), I think I'll space it out over the next few days, in a sort of retrospective blog ("retrospective", here, being a big word that means "late").

Cape Town:

Arrived without too much ado, although it turns out my fitness regime has been pretty ineffectual, this becoming clear as I huffed and puffed my way behind a porter at Johannesburg Airport who grabbed my bags, saying something about getting me to my flight on time, and took off down the stretch at a gallop. At any rate, after tipping him the equivalent of ten taxi-rides, I hopped the plane to Cape Town and was transferred to a house near the beach where I would be staying for the next two days.

This part of Cape Town was populated by beautiful houses, mostly white people, and dogs. Lots of dogs. Went for a walk along the beach and 60% of creatures met were of the canine variety. The house is lovely and restful, and feels comfortingly like a real home (convenient, as it is one). Woke up on the first day to a lovely sunrise over the ocean, unfortunately followed by 30 degree heat. (Heat, in Africa? Who would've thought? Certainly not me, having been informed, so I thought, by the ever-trustworthy weather.co.uk...)

Ok, the "white" thing? It comes up. This is a country for whom apartheid has only been over for 14 years (!), and despite the fact that they've come on a heck of a lot faster than the USA, there's still an awkward sort of divide there.

Went up Table Mountain, which was pretty stunning in terms of views, if a tad over-populated by tourists, and then on one ill-fated and frankly unwise trip to "Seal Island". "Island" is somewhat misleading, as it conjours up a decent land mass, whereas the Island actually consists of a large rock in the ocean. And, and I can't stress this enough, it smells. Bad. If it weren't enough for me to already suffer from a failure to inherit my mother's sea legs, the smell would have tipped me over the edge. As it was, I had both, and it was a miserable trip from start to finish.

The rest of the cape is beautiful, though, and it has a laid-back lazy sort of feeling to it. Africa time, they call it.