High flying birds

According to our planned itinerary today was a 'lie in and chill out' day.
We had time to kill this morning, so decided to drive down to the V&A waterfront for a look around.
They had a huge mall there and we were surprised to see that some prices were much more than at home. For example, Mr A's favourite aftershave was £11 more here than at home.

As we were preparing to leave Cape Town to drive to Hermanus, we spotted a couple of parachutes over Signal Hill, so went to investigate.
We'd seen a couple of ads for paragliding, but the weather for the last couple of days hasn't been good, so they've not been able to fly.
Today was our lucky day, as conditions were perfect and as luck would have it, despite not being booked in, they said if we could get ready as fast as possible, we could fly straight away!

It was a tandem jump; my pilot was a lovely lady called Carolina. She reassured me that she'd been doing this for over 30 years, but I said I wasn't worried as we all know lady drivers are the best!
Mr A's pilot was her brother and it was nice to be able to fly around and wave at each other!
Carolina and I flew much higher than Mr A something to do with weight and got some really good thermals. We were in the air for what felt like ages (but only about 10 minutes), before we landed down on the beach.
To see Cape Town from the air like that was absolutely amazing and a truly memorable experience.
I was actually crapping it as they were putting the harness on me to set off, but once we were airborne I felt OK. I had Bambi legs when we came into land though, so when she said to stand for the landing, I struggled!
Mr A had his go-pro on and I used Carolina's one, so we've got some good photos and videos to view when we get home.

Our drive to Hermanus was really good, mainly because we deviated off the highway and followed a coastal road. This took us past some spectacular scenery and into a little town called Pringle Bay. We found a cute little cafe there and the lady owner chatted to us a while about the places we are visiting. Next stop was Betty's Bay and we found another colony of penguins with only a handful of tourists. I'd recommend people to visit there instead of Boulders Beach.
One inquisitive penguin walked right up to my feet!

We now have two nights in Hermanus and are in a little guest house which is really quite special. The room is amazing and we have views of both the sea (at the back) and the mountains (at the front).
Our host took the liberty of reserving us a table in town for dinner tonight, which I thought was a lovely touch.

Our shark dive has been confirmed for tomorrow morning, so it will be another early night tonight.