Friday 10th August

by Carrie

Another fabulous day chez South Africa!

The day started at 8am with a huge breakfast – fruit salad, yogurt, cereal, cooked breakfast and toast with homemade jam and marmalade! Our hosts, Stephanie and Ian, served us – they are wonderful, caring people and they help cook all our meals and serve them to us.

After breakfast we all headed off for the journey to the head of the Blyde River Canyon – the deepest green canyon in the world (and third largest canyon in the world). It was hard to comprehend seeing such amazing and staggering landscape beauty after seeing incredible animal sights in Kruger. But our God is good and he rewarded our hard work with sharing His glory with us. We spent time at the head of the canyon just breathing in the beauty and also shopping – there were lots of market stalls where we could buy souvenirs and presents at knock down prices. Carvings and fabrics, jewellery and pictures, so much stunning African art that it was hard to resist!

We journeyed on down the canyon stopping at more viewing points to take in the incredible, unbelievable scenery and, of course, doing more shopping! Lunch was in the Silver Spoon Café in Graskop – the pancake capital of South Africa. All our meals out have been superb quality but the speed of service? Suffice it to say we shall not be missing that!

Then it was back in the buses to the retreat and an afternoon of reflection on our three weeks in South Africa. It is amazing that we all felt we had had such positive experiences here, and many of us are keen to return!

6.30pm saw another wonderful meal served in the candle lit dining room – roast chicken! The evening ended with devotions round the fire and playing games before we fell into bed exhausted and happy!

Thank you God for another superb day.