Bulletin 9

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Hi all

I am writing this last bulletin from the comfort of our friend's house in the UK.

We had a fantastic time dune-boarding in Swakopmund, and then moved on south to a place called Sossusvlei which has some of the world's most spectacular sand-dunes. Some of these are hundreds of meters high. We did manage to get our truck stuck in the sand at one point, and so had our last sandmatting session.

From Sossusvlei we headed back out to the coast to Luderitz where there is an abandoned diamond mining town that was well worth a visit, especially as the sand-dunes have started to swallow the place.

South of Luderitz, and back in-land, we visited the Fish River Canyon which is second only in scale to the Grand Canyon in the USA. At one end of the canyon is Ai-Ais where they have hot springs.

After Ai-Ais we headed down to the Orange river which forms the border with South Africa. The border controls were very thorough, with sniffer dogs going over the truck, etc.

Once in South Africa we headed straight down towards Cape Town, stopping at Citrusdaal where there are more hot springs.

Before going into Cape Town we stopped at Stellenbosh which is at the heart of the Cape wine growing area, and spent the day on a wine tour sampling over 20 different wines from four separate vineyards.

Our last day as a group took us from Stellenbosh down to Cape Point, where we took the funicular up to the old lighthouse, via Simonstown to visit the "Jackass" penguins (they really do sound like donkeys). We then drove into Cape Town where the overland trip ended. We had a final group meal and cleared out the truck and then everyone started to disperse. Saying goodbye to everybody was a tearful event, but we are going to keep in touch.

We are now back in the UK, safe and sound, and spending a lot of our time going throught the 2500 photos and 21 hours of video we have.

Cheers Steve and Debs

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