A warm New Year’s celebration – I should have been doing this for years

Getting started at party number one

When we arrived back from Tanzania, Andrea and I had about an hour to get through customs and checked into our flight to Cape Town for New Year’s weekend. In the US, this would seem to be near impossible. In South Africa, it took us all of 10 minutes to get off the plane, go through passport control, get our bags and get through customs.

An added bonus to our trip to CT was that we were able to convince Ilona to come. too. We even got her on the same flight as us! Except that she got the date confused, missed her flight, and arrived later on in the afternoon that Thursday.  This made for a hilarious situation as Ilona had Andrea’s keys to her apartment in CT. Luckily, Andrea’s friends bailed us out and gave us a place to hang all day before Ilona arrived later that night.

Trying not to fall off the balcony

As New Year’s preparations began, I was worried it would be a bust. This has nothing to do with my love/hate affair with CT, or Andrea, or Ilona. The way I wrote that sounds as if I have a love/hate relationship with Andrea and Ilona. That’s not what I meant. I have a love affair with them…just not always with Cape Town. Anyway…it has to do with New Year’s Eve and the inevitable disappointment that comes from an evening full of such hype. But, I will say this is one of the better New Year’s I’ve had in a long time. This is likely because it was summer in South Africa as opposed to frigidly cold, like I am used to spending the holiday. We hit up a few parties, went hiking in Stellnbosch (where I was forced into eating mince (dried fruit) pie and fruit cake – ACK!), went hiking up Lion’s Head on Saturday afternoon, and even went to a cricket match with Bryden, his friend, and his mom on Sunday.

Ilona and I got back to Jozi late on Sunday night so we were pretty tired the next day. I went to work, she stayed at my place…and pretty much stayed through the rest of the week, too!

With Ilona at the cricket match...during a four hour rain delay. Luckily, there was beer.

Not a bad last week to spend in South Africa before heading Stateside.