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Lions, leopards and hyenas…

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Dan and I decided to spend our first few days in Tanzania by doing a two-day safari.  On day 1 we went to Lake Manyara and on day 2 we went to the Ngorongoro Crater.  It was a huge success.  We saw zebras, elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, lions, hyenas, wildabeast,  warthogs, a leopard and a cheetah.  A female lion walked right in front of our jeep and layed down.  Lions are known for being quite lazy and are not scared of the safari jeeps.  It was really cool to see her close up, we could even see scratches on her face from past confrontations, perhaps with hyenas.  We also got some good giraffe views and was surprised at how much their heads look like camel heads up close.  They are not too pretty, but are quite cute, in an ugly sort of way.  The warthogs we saw were a full family with babies, which were very adorable.  After recently seeing a discovery channel documentary on the hyena, I was hoping to hear their famous cackle, but that wasn’t to be.  However I can’t complain too much because I did get to hear our 20 year-old safari companions argue for about an hour about whether a zebra is black on white or white on black.  

I will leave you with two great trivia questions, dan and I received from our safari mates:

What are the 10 countries in the world that have only four letter names (in English at least)?

What two countries begin with “A” but don’t end with “A”?     

Say Ahhhh!

The Garden Route

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

After a few days relaxing in Cape Town, we decided to rent a car and drive along the southern coast to what’s known as the Garden Route. This is a stretch of nice beach towns between Knysna (pronounced Nice-ah) and Port Elizabeth. So, we got our thrifty rental and set off once again on the ‘wrong’ side of the road… this time with a manual instead of an automatic. 

We found an amazing beach house just outside of Plettinburgh Bay. When we arrived, we were its only tenants. The owners had a suite on the second floor, we had a room on the first, and there was a kitchen, living room, and rooftop deck on the third. The view from the deck was magnificent from this well designed and comfortably furnished home. The view was of the bay with its long beaches outstretched in both directions. We had a 60 meter walk to the beach which we took full advantage of. Paula buried me to my chin in sand, we played in water that had some of the best boogie boarding waves I can think of and strolled along the beach as the day wore on. Being nearly the only people on the beach made for a very secluded and romantic feel. We made full use of the kitchen and cooked all of our meals. We had cereal with bananas and fruit on the side for breakfast. We ate tuna sandwhiches with tomato, apples, and cucumber for lunch and made pasta for dinner. We even found some Pillsbury brownie mix and splurged to make a pan of brownies… which we gobbled up quickly!

As we were driving along near our house, we saw a baboon (maybe 100Lbs and less than 5 feet tall) walking along the road. Later we found out that earlier in the day that baboon had sneaked into our next door neighbor’s house to steal apples! What a cheeky monkey!

Cape Town

Saturday, March 1st, 2008
We arrived in Cape Town and were immediately excited by all the adventurous prospects that Africa had to offer. Kiliminjaro is only a few weeks away, safaris are available seemingly everywhere, and the raw beauty of this continent jumps out ... [Continue reading this entry]