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Well at last it is very nearly here, Chrimble approaches Africa and its visitors from the northern hemisphere. The flu that kindly accompanied me down south has decided to stay a little longer – clearly my body is a temple of viral hospitality. Let us not forget viruses are also beings (albeit little ones) – why shouldn’t they also join us in the festive celebrations? So while I am kept busy helping the viruses to multiply and prepare to move onto their next fortunate host RISKKO and his friends have offered to help sort out the Christmas decorations.

My virus was not the only little being that joined RISKKO and I on the journey down south. As we were shopping for Christmas decorations in one of those ubiquitous ‘everything for £1’ shops Ted jumped into our shopping basket and pleaded to be rescued from the cold north. Take a look at his picture below – could you have resisted his request? So while RISKKO put up the fairy lights Ted decided where best to hang the tinsel.

The Christmas decorations team had a third member, Reg. Reg is from Africa and we found him exploring Sandy Bay beach looking for nice plants to eat: Reg is a vegetarian lion cub and I will explain more about his background in a future blog. He is known locally as ‘Regy the Vegy’ and being a lion it was only right that he assumed a supervisory role in the decorating project.

In addition to our household decorations I would like to introduce you, this week, to some of the natural decorations that make this country so beautiful. When I first came to Africa I noticed that there were not very many Christmas decorations – certainly in comparison to Woking! Then as I looked around I realised why. When nature decorates the countryside as beautifully as the pictures below illustrate there is very little that man can do to enhance the beauty (despite Ted being a dab hand with the tinsel!). So for the rest of today’s blog I am going to take you back up Chapman’s Peak and introduce you to some of the sights and flowers which were simply growing at the side of the path.

The next three pictures set the scene and show the stunning landscape in which the flowers which follow were found. After that I will simply leave you with pictures of some of the flowers. Each flower picture has a number – if you can identify the name of any of the flowers please do not hesitate to let me know using the comments box and I can add these to the blog for future reference. All the pictures are taken with high-definition photography so just click on the photograph to see a more detailed version.

Enjoy – and have a merry Christmas,

Chris Duggleby.

….and to round off the blog after so much eye candy how about a little ear candy for Chritmas from Enya – when I hear this I imagine the pleasure I am giving to the billions of influensa viruses living in my body. That’s how easy it is to spread warmth and happiness – if you have to endure the flu try and leave the viruses with a good impression – maybe next time they will be a little gentler!