We arrived in South Africa last Friday with our 5 pieces of hand luggage and 5 pieces of checked in luggage! We had to have my sister-in-law, Jodi come and fetch us as she was the only one with a big enough car to fit both us and our belongings.

Unfortunately everything doesn’t always go according to plan in Africa, so when we arrived we found out that something serious had gone wrong with the electrics in the flat (above), attached to my parents’ house, where we will be staying.  This meant that we could move our things in, but we would have to stay in the main house. To be honest – that’s the warmer part of the house, so we weren’t complaining.
Our little flatlet is small, but perfectly formed.
The bedroom is nice and big with enough storage for all our things.
But of course one of the loveliest parts of my parents’ house is the outdoor space: the pool is still too chilly to swim in, but hopefully we can swim within the next month.
The weather has been warm during the day, but cool at night. I always forget that in fact Pretoria’s winter temperature is warmer than Manchester’s summer temperature on average as you can see below. I must mention though that spring officially starts on Sunday 1st September – not all of winter is this warm!
Also to remember: South African houses are built for summer: no heating and very draughty.  So in winter, when temperatures drop to single digits, or even below zero, you really feel it.
Next challenge when we arrived: the wi-fi wasn’t working. Felt like our hands and feet had been chopped off. Amazing how you just take it for granted.  Luckily we got it back up just as we were leaving for 5 days in the Pilanesburg on Monday morning.  More about those experiences soon…
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