Last Typped entry of our trip!!

April 8th& 9th, 2009
Last travel Day!
We left the lodge and transferred to the airport at Hoedspruit. A short flight to JoBurg and then a 5.5 hr. layover. We killed the time quite easily just shopping to spend the last bit of money we had and eating. We then had a 8.5 hr. flight to our stopover in Dakar where we re-fueled and got our plane searched. Another 9.25 hr. flight to Atlanta. In Atlanta we were able to switch flights so we then connected through Cincinnati and were able to arrive home at 3:30 p.m. where Boomer was there to great us.
It feels so good to be home!!

April 7th, 2009
Our last full day of honeymoon, Boo!! We got up for the early morning routine again and headed out on the rover. This morning was really exciting. We got to see an old kill of a cape buffalo that was being fought over by a lone mufasa (male lion) and a pack of hyenas (12 or so, and they’re bigger than you’d think). It was crazy; we were parked between the two and being looked down upon by about 50 vultures. The lion was looking pretty territorial and scary so we convinced our guide to leave him alone, since we were sure the 15 foot leap into our truck was probably a piece of cake for the big guy! (He was sure that the lion was more scared of us, but we begged to differ and headed out!) After leaving the kill we ended up seeing many warthogs out and about, as well as coming upon a breeding herd of Cape Buffalo. We didn’t count, but a random guess would be about 150 of these scary looking beasts walking and feeding about 15 feet from our rover. We heard there were leopards in the area that we started to search for, but our guide got a call over the CB radio and was told a white rhino had been spotted. Since this would complete our big 5 sightings he stayed out past return time and drove us to him. He was well worth the extra time, super cool, especially since we got within about 20 feet and they’re so rare to spot. After the drive and huge brunch, we lounged by the pool with giraffes, elephants, and impala in the distance. Our final evening drive brought leopards around a kill (young male impala), hippos, baboons, warthogs, elephants, grey duiker (a smallish grey antelope we hadn’t seen before), and a chameleon after sundown. Laura proved her spotter talents again finding another leopard in a tree, waaay in the distance. Our last dinner was warthog stew and lamb chops, both yummy. Off to bed for our last night in the bush paradise!

April 6th, 2009
Knock-on-the-door wake up call at 5:30 am for morning drive attendees, yikes. We headed to the Veranda for muffins and coffee at 6 before heading out at 6:30. Today could’ve been renamed Elephant day. We couldn’t get away from them, we must have seen over 60, even way up close. Most ignored us totally, some appeared friendly, some not so friendly and made us wet our pants a little bit. One 6000 lbs. monster was in musk (you could tell from his ‘parts’ and hind legs being swollen and the smell) and came rumbling across our path about 30 yards ahead. When he shot us a glance and veered towards us a bit, even the guide panicked a bit and threw the Rover into reverse and we shot out of there. The rest of us, needless to say, needed a change of pants. Other sightings this morning were a lone bull cape buffalo, waterbuck, warthogs, impala, and again many birds. We went back for our huge breakfast/brunch at 10 a.m. and then headed off for a much needed nap and shower. When we awoke, the small pond behind our bungalow had a momma warthog and 2 babies wallowing in the mud! There was an afternoon talk on nocturnal animals, (the bushbaby became our favorite, but we never spotted him) and then had lunch before heading out for night drive #2. Tonight we got to see the hippos in the dam and Laura also spotted a crocodile about 200 yds. away, even the guides were impressed! The herds of kudu, impala, bushbuck and waterbucks were out in force tonight, but not much more for the big game. After sunset we saw a jackal. When we got back we opened our bottle of wine that housekeeping had left for us for our honeymoon and then finished it up at dinner. On the way to Boma, we found 2 elephants drinking from our swimming pool, yep the water’s chlorinated. What a surreal sight about 50 feet from us! Being on foot is NOT like being in the Rover. Tonight’s dinner was wild trout and ostrich as the main dish. No entertainment, so we headed off to bed.

April 5th, 2009
An early morning pickup at 4:30 a.m. to head to the airport in Cape Town. We boarded our flight to Johannesburg without incident even though it seemed as if we’d miss our flight due to the crazy lines at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning! The flight from JoBurg to Hoedspruit was delayed by over an hour, but we finally made it in the early afternoon. We had a transfer waiting for us and then we had an hour drive to get to Motswari. Along the way we did quite well at spotting some animals: a cape buffalo, giraffe, rhino, kudu, and zebra. We arrived at the lodge and were shown to our bungalow for the next 3 days, called Cheetah. Lunch was served and then it was time to head out on our first gamedrive, that lasted from 3:30 until about 7:15 each evening. Our first drive was exciting and our land rover group consisted of 2 other couples, one from Denmark and the other from Australia. We ended up doing well for our first night and spotted two leopards, cape buffalo, steenbok, numerous birds, two lions at night drinking from a watering hole, giraffes, zebras, and just one elephant pushing over a tree after dark. At sundown, we stop the Land Rover for some snacks and cocktails right in the bush, very cool. We got dropped off at the room to freshen up and then were picked up by an armed guide because we couldn’t walk in the camp alone after dark as there were no security fences on the property. At the Boma, we had drinks and a delicious dinner of soup and Braai (South African BBQ) with grilled sides. All the dinners are cooked by local village chefs in rotation. We were pretty bushed by now and headed to bed in our rustic but luxurious bungalow. Unfortunately that meant we missed the after dinner entertainment: drummers and dancers, but heard them as we drifted off.

April 4, 2009
We woke up with the plan of heading to the beach before heading out on our ½ day tour, unfortunately it was raining on and off so we decided to start our tour earlier. We got picked up by Amelia and headed out to the winelands in Stellenbosch. The first tasting we did was at a winery called Thelema, second was Warwick, where we drank out of the two sided silver lady chalice for a tradition they do. The last and final winery was called Kleine Zalze that was known for their award-winning Pinotage, a grape specific to South Africa. We then saw a bit of Stellenbosch University which is an Africaans language school. In the evening we relaxed and packed our bags before heading out to a dinner at Café Paradiso just a few blocks from the hotel.


April 3rd, 2009
Up early, as we had a full day tour ahead of us. The first stop was at Glencairns for Baboon Matters. This is a conservation effort started by a mother and son who are trying to raise awareness for baboons in the area and they do a nature walk with the monkeys to support it. The baboons are regarded here as our raccoons might be. Once they get a taste of human food, they become quite fond of it and are often found breaking into peoples houses and opening the fridges. Because of people shooting them, the numbers are starting to dwindle, so this company is hoping to help people understand that it’s because humans are encroaching on the baboons’ natural habitats that these problems arise. It seems like it is always an uphill battle for them! They even employ “baboon monitors,” who stand in the bush and scare them back up to the forest when they get too close to residential areas. Even with these efforts, we saw a couple of them walking down the sidewalk, completely unfazed by passing motorists, heading to the nearby Compass Bakery’s dumpster (which isn’t closed up at all, according to our guide) for a tasty treat.
The baboons didn’t cooperate with us when we wanted to see them. They were hanging out at the top of the mountain, and if we wanted to see them we had to bushwack up the hillside with no paths to find them. The vegetation was extremely dry and scratchy like walking through rose bushes. We finally caught up with the troop and got to hang out with a dozen baboons for 30 minutes watching them forage, groom and socialize. This was all good until our guide got a little too close to an ovulating female and the males didn’t like it. They all charged towards us grinning their teeth and chattering, so we thought this was a good point to exit! We continued south on our tour to Boulder’s Bay which is a natural community of African penguins living on the beaches. There were nearly 3-4,000 today, where the numbers were much lower about 5 years ago. The last stop on our tour was within Table Mountain National Park and the Cape of Good Hope, the tip furthest South in South Africa and we got the picture to prove we were there! We hiked around a bit and then rode the funicular to the top of the old lighthouse. We took the western shore up north working our way home. Along the way we were able to spot some bunkcoo antelopes, baboons and wild ostrich. Before we got home we drove through some of the township areas which really are like 3rd world Africa right on the doorsteps of Capetown, and are nearly shanty towns and breeding grounds for many many crimes. A sad site. We then drove through the Camp’s Bay area, which is about as opposite as it gets. A beach community with condos and huge houses overlooking the ocean! In the evening we hung out at Asoka, an Asian tapas restaurant near our hotel. The food was great and ridiculously affordable as it has been everywhere. By 11:30, the place was pretty hopping, but we were pretty beat from being chased by baboons and scaling up the Cape Point lighthouse hill, so went back to our apartment and crashed.


April 2nd, 2009
We woke up and went to the breakfast room above the hotel. There was a beautiful buffet each day and a menu to order a la carte, and we were the only ones there except for the last day. Amelia picked us up and we started off our city tour riding the cable cars up Table Mountain. We had lucked out because there was supposed to be fog and high winds that would have shut it down, but there was bright sunshine and not too much wind so we went up with no problem. Afterwards we went to the District 6 museum that commemorated the forced removals and uprisings of blacks and colored people during apartheid. We learned that in S.A. these two terms actually are quite distinct determining racial divides. We also got to see the company gardens that were the area for sailors trading with the Dutch East India Spice Company, to stop and purchase fruits and vegetables during the long journey, as to not get scurvy. These were donated to the city by Cecil Rhodes (Rhodes scholar & Rhodesia.) We wandered around a few of the african markets and then were dropped off at the V&A Waterfront for the afternoon. This waterfront was basically indistinguishable from one you would see in a North American port city, other than the steel drummers and African singers/dancers. We had a relaxing lunch at Quay 4 for some ‘hake n chips’ and drinks. We walked around the nice shopping mall for awhile before we headed off to the Aquarium for late afternoon. Around 5 p.m. we got out our map and decided a walking route back to the city centre and our hotel. Along the way we passed a new resort going up called the ‘One & Only,’ and learned it was just opening up tomorrow and Hollywood stars were supposed to be out in full force, unfortunately we didn’t see any! There was a restaurant called ‘Maze’ by Gordon Ramsey that we tried to no avail to get a reservation at before leaving. We also had a small encounter along the walk with two uppity teenagers, who were hoping for some money, but Nick’s flailing arms and loud shouts did the trick and we were left unharmed, just a bit on edge for the rest of our trip. Dinner was at 95 Keerom, but only after we drove around in numerous circles trying to locate it with our taxi driver. This was a great Italian/South African fusion restaurant. Nick tried the Springbok linguini and I had butternut ravioli along with a great bottle of wine.

April Fools Day!
We got up at 4:30 in preparation for our early flight out of Douala. We made it through the airport despite their being absolutely no signs explaining anything along the way. The flight out was delayed due to some paperwork and fees not being collected on time, but we made it to Jo’Burg just fine, only too late for our connection to Cape Town. After getting our bags, we were met by a rep from our touring company who helped us change to the later flight to C.T.. They wanted to charge us an upgrade fee and our bags were overweight for domestic S.A. flights, but our crafty guide caused enough ruckus and insulted enough ticket agents that we got through gratis (as we should have!). We made it to Cape Town and were met by our guide for the next 3 days, Amelia. She took us to the city and dropped us at the Cape Cadogan hotel, only to find out we had been booked in their sister company’s, MoreQuarters, apartments. We were shown to our room and surprised with rose petals sprinkling the bed, floor and drawn bath, along with chocolates and a bottle of champagne!

March 31st, 2009
We got up early again today to head back to chapel for our farewell, but we were overlooked again, which we preferred anyways. We said our final goodbyes to the anaesthesiologists and Margaret and then got picked up about an hour late! We met up with the others in Bameda that were also headed to Douala, did some craft shopping and then started our journey. We got a van that overheated along the way and had to stop and collect water to fill the radiator and cool it off. Then we stopped for street meat, street fried plantains and pineapple on a stick. We finally made it through the heat and humidity to the European Guest house and promptly jumped in the pool, ahhh what relief! We each got our rooms and showered up and then headed out for dinner at the White House with Kara Beth and the two men from World Medical Missions.
We played a game of cribbage and then went to bed.