Anna*s Bananas: March update

Many things have been happening...and not much blogging. So here is the quick update with some photos.

Cape Town is enjoying a lovely late fall with warm temperature (up to 40 degrees) and cool nights with not as much wind. Things have been busy with weekend holiday, birthdays, hiking trips, and the usual day to day of varsity and work.
Graham had friends visiting from the UK so we spent a weekend in Hermanus just down the coast, where the water is warmer (marginally) and stayed in a huge house that sleeps 26 people...in beds.
Then was Graham's 30th birthday party, appropriately themed XXX (because that is 30 in Roman numerals right, and we all dressed up, and have a party in the top room of a bar in Observatory (the suburb where we live) at the Obs Cafe. Friends came down, people dressed up, and margaritas where enjoyed by all.
We then took a few days off work, and headed into the Ceres region about 2 hours from Cape Town. This is a beautiful mountainous area, and you may recognize the name Ceres from a brand of fruit juice that is exported to Canada. Here, we hiked along the Witels river, the same trip where I met Graham last year. This year with did the trip with Lucy and Meg (Graham's sister and friend) and after a brisk first day, enjoyed boulder hopping down the river and stayed cool with the 14 mandatory swims en route. As you'll see from the photo of the flower, this mountain range also had devastating fires earlier in the year, and left much of the side of the mountain in ash; it's likely a lot of the path will wash away with winter rains.
This past week, a friend of mine from university, Ryan, came and visited from Toronto. He was here for a work conference, and managed to add a 5 day holiday onto the end of the trip. We went all over including the winelands near Stellenbosch and Paarl, to swim at Fish Hoek (Ryan's first time in the ocean), drive on Chapman's Peak, explore Llandudno Beach, have sundowners at Clifton...it was great. Also, on Sunday I completed the Argus cycle tour , Graham and I finished in 5 hours the 109km route which had over 38,000 participants. The sun shone and the wind managed to not blow that hard and so it was a very enjoyable day.
I'm very much settling into Cape Town now. I have about three 2 hour lectures a week (courses are Epidemiology, Biostats, Gender & Health, and Public Health & Society), and spend the rest of my time between working out of Graham's office in Observatory, and at Sports Science and the Medical Reserach Unit (in the Chronic disease of lifestyle unit). I'm doing some research on best practices interventions for the WHO in conjuction with their Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health and then also participating one day a week with a learn to run 10km program as an instructor. Plus, helping out a bit with NDORFIN, updating the adventure/extreme events calendar, a project of Graham's and a couple friends...
Looking forward to only 17 working days in April (South Africa has so many public holidays), two 30th birthday parties next week, and Elke & Dan's arrival in Cape Town for the majority of May. Also...flights have been booked and we're heading on holiday during my school break in June/July with a few days in London and then almost 2 weeks at home on the West Coast.
Enjoy the below photos, keep in touch...all the best!

House in Hermanus