In 2017 Sally my wife and I decided to emigrate to Cape Town, South Africa I was 69 years old. It was not forced on us but our two daughters and their families had already made the move. Our younger daughter had come first - she married a Portuguese South African. We had come out on holiday to visit them and loved what we saw and the life. We went back to the UK and told the tale to our elder daughter and her husband  came, saw and decided to move out; within six months they had sold two dental practices and a house and were waiting to move into a house just up the road from us. Sally and I followed in September 2017. We arrived, with our two cats and a dog who had flown out with us. In Cape Town, had already bought a house in the Southern suburb of Noorhoek see the picture below.

This picture was taken in July (mid Winter here). It is set an acre of grounds we have the mountains behind us and the South Atlantic about half a mile the other way with wetlands stretching for a mile across the valley. It is an idyllic spot. Interestingly in our title deeds we have the right to graze 12 head of cattle and cut reeds to roof our house on the wetlands! To put Cape Town in a geographic perspective we are approximately 30 degrees south of the equator Morocco is the same latitude north. Our time zone is one hour ahead of the UK in your summer time and two hours ahead n your winter. So what attracts, us five things: the scenery you can see some in the photo of the house, the climate, no frost and hot dry summers yes we do get rain in the winter we need to keep us through the summer. The wine which is excellent you pay £12.00 to £20.00 for a bottle we pay upwards of three pounds a bottle for a very good cabernet sauvignon. Food is good value very high quality beef is much cheaper as is pork lamb is a little cheaper but fresh fruit and veg is excellent value. Eating out is cheap - a Michelin class lunch with a bottle of wine and coffee is about £45.00. The people here are very friendly and helpful to us immigrants.

Of course no description of the country would be complete without mentioning  the wild life, our favourite park is the massive Kalagadii Transfrontier park it spans Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. It is a self-drive park and you can do it with a saloon car but a 4x4 is better and you can do all the tracks - even in the wet weather. The wild life is amazing all the animals are quite used to cars. There are giraffes but no elephants or rhinos. The lions like to lie on the sand roads and snooze - you have drive round them. It really is a great experience especially when you have an evening electrical storm while you are having a braai South African for BBQ. In our travels we visited Kimberley where they have the Big Hole. 

Above is a picture of the Kimberley Mine, below are the statistics of the workings which were all done by hand there are no accident statistics but I guess they were high.

Here is the author in the Namib desert temperature 40C humidity 8% (you make sure you have plenty of water about five gallons in the car).

Fires here are always a danger mostly started by arsonists, this a picture of a Huey helicopter Vietnam war vintage still doing sterling work water bombing the fire in front of our house.

The fynbos, heathland vegetation needs fire to regenerate about every seven to 10 years. At the end of April this year about 3,000 hectares went up over a couple of days.

Written by Michael Perrott (OI 1959 - 66)