Another nail biting long wait in the immigration office in Cape Town. We collected our visa extension results..Yippee! Not too painful either. We lunched on the way home at a favourite half way restaurant. The Yippee turned to horror, after checking our visas. Oh no!… a mistake with the expiry date……and not in our favour, having cut our return date by two months! Why, oh why did we not check this at desk?.. So much confusion at the time, we just grabbed and ran.

Once again we have defeated the Covid pandemic. We, the intrepid duo, will not be beaten. We did it before, we’ll do it again! This time, a year later, with two  cancelled flights on airlines refusing to fly to South Africa, we sought a third, Swiss Airways. Every day until we left we dreaded that this one may follow suit, especially as the new variant Omicron raised its ugly head. Lady Luck was on our side, however, and with blood streams surging with anti viral drugs, noses and throats swabbed, and an abundance  of necessary documentation we  travelled, albeit with some trepidation. Circumstances can change so rapidly in such a precarious crisis . The journey was longer this time as involved a seven hour stop over in Zurich, but much less stressful,  and went to plan. Were we relieved to clear customs at Cape Town air port after a thirty hour trip.?

Our covid vaccinations have been awaiting our return from SA. All very well organised and efficientally executed. This totally negated our belief in the Spanish ’laissez-faire’ attitude. In this instance anyway. We were soon to learn that it indeed does still exist…. And mañana is never the next day! We thought that France slowed us down, but we’re now so slow we’ll soon be going backwards..!

Our first resident guests were Esha and Luna… Our grand dogs. With Julian in Madrid, and Lorena and Manolo having to go to Valencia, (5 hours away) to get the necessary paperwork to allow Manolo to visit his father and family in Columbia, gave us the pleasure of dog caring. Not ideal in a first floor apartment but plenty of space outside for walking and romping…….us the former, hounds the latter! The front balcony was shady for them to sleep and in the heat , loved to spread themselves across tiled floors, usually in a door way. Morning walking was along a lane to the mountains and open scrub-land. In the evening they reveled in the beach night time walks and swims…always a roll in the sand and a good shake after… always with a poo bag!… so obedient, a joy to have them.