Sabbatical Diaries Week Three: Rosie Gibson in South Africa!

Well, it has certainly been an interesting 3rd week on sabbatical!

The week started as planned, as we drove from Franschhoek down to a beautiful small seaside town called Still Baii, where we stayed in a private nature reserve. We spent a relaxing few days enjoying the peace and quiet and the beautiful beach, before driving along the Garden Route to Knynsa. Unfortunately there we experienced our only two days of rain in South Africa, resulting in us spending less time than we expected hiking and more time visiting art galleries and sitting in cafes!

Unfortunately, that night we received the news that South Africa was to be put on the UK travel red list from 4 am that Sunday morning. Our flight home was due to land at midday on Sunday, so we had to make some quick decisions!

After some frantic research and many concerned texts from family and friends, we luckily managed to get tickets on the last flight out of Cape Town to Europe on Friday morning; meaning we landed in Munich on Friday night. Still, with no tickets booked from Munich to London, we waited for the results of our emergency PCR tests in Munich airport.

Whilst isolation isn’t how I thought I would be spending the final week of my sabbatical, I am just grateful to be home! We are incredibly fortunate to have made it back to the UK as many people we met out in South Africa could not get seats on a flight and are now stuck there until flights resume, and will also have to enter hotel quarantine when they do make it back.

My final entry into this sabbatical diary will probably look slightly different from my previous ones as I will be doing much more DIY and home workouts and far less hiking and wine tasting!

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