Vacation! Bukabong Bush Lodge

We spent the last two days of our vacation staying at Bakubung Bush Lodge, located inside of Pilanesberg National Park. Bakubung means "People of the Hippo".

Will, Zach and Colby went on a safari the first day and then I went on a safari the following day. A quick summary of the safari experience is to say it was amazing. Some of the animals were right next to our safari truck! Here are some of our favorite safari pictures...

It is kind of difficult to see some of the animals in these pictures because they were far off in the distance and these pictures are pretty small. If you would like to them larger, or view all 110 pictures we took, here is a link to the album:

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=496298013/a=132428679_132428679/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish

This last photo, of the lake, is one of my personal favorites from my safari trip. Although it is difficult to see, this is a picture of a hippo. He came up out of the water and opened his mouth super wide and I just happened to have my camera on and ready. It was so cool! I still can't believe how wide he could open his mouth! Everyone was in awe of having been at the right place and the right time- I felt like I had just witnessed a solar eclipse or something!

The elephants were definitely the closest, the most plentiful and one of the neatest to just sit and watch (they're so big!!) However...

At the end of my safari trip we got caught up in a "traffic jam." We were gridlocked in the middle of about 25 cars, just parked at a stand-still. The safari guide used her CB to contact other guides and discovered that there was a herd of elephants blocking the route to get out of the park gate. So, we sat patiently (it was pictch dark by this time) and waited for the elephants to move along. Then all of a sudden people were honking their car horns and sticking there heads out of their car windows while yelling, "Move! Back up! Go!" I had visions of being in the middle of an elephant stampede flashing through my head as everyone scooted around in a state of panic. Turns out the people at the front where just sick of waiting for them to move, so they were trying to get the whole line of people to back up. All the commotion made the elephants move so it turned out not to be a big problem. But I kept wondering what would happen if they just sat down and settled in for a good night's sleep while we were waiting in line?!

The giraffees were pretty far off in the distant, but it was still really neat watching a group of them walk across the terrain. So tall and elegant.

The youngest of our three wild animals was not allowed to go on the safaris (too young = too noisy!) so while Will, Zach and Colby were on their safari the two of us just hung out around the lodge. While walking around at a leisurely pace checking out naturey things like weird bugs, tall birds and dirt piles, I heard some scuffling right across the path. I looked up and there were 7 zebra just hanging out! It was so weird! So we sat together and just watched them munch away on dinner. Nolan got a kick out of them neighing at each other! I was bummed I didn't have my camera with me- Will and the boys had it on the safari!

I was really bummed I didn't have my camera with me when Nolan made friends with a baby monkey! When the zebras wandered off Nolan and I continued walking around. At one point Nolan sat in the grass under a tree and started picking at the grass and then he started rolling around. This little 5 inch monkey jumped up in the tree above Nolan and started watching him from a branch. Then the monkey started following him. When Nolan rolled to the right, the monkey scurried down the tree after him. They went back and forth four or five times before a bigger monkey came and jumped up in the tree too. I think he was guarding the little guy. I looked up and thought, "If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him." Crazy! It really is amazing being out in the wild!

Vacation! Sun City

We just got back from our first African Vacation! We took lots of great pictures, so I'll try to squeeze as many of them in here as possible!

It was so nice to get out and see a different part of Africa. We went to South Africa (just two countries south of here) for a week. We spent 5 days at Sun City (a resort) and 2 days at Bakubung Bush Lodge (a lodge in the middle of a safari park). It is amazing how different South Africa is from Angola. Angola is so run down, poor and dirty and South Africa reminded me a lot of the Midwest (but with the addition of mountains in the background!). And they speak English there- yippee! Sun City was a perfect spot for us- it’s a very family-friendly resort with lots of fun things to do, especially for boys!

They had mini-golf, bumper boats, mini-cars, an arcade area, a playground with a huge slide, a small petting zoo, a camp for kids and much more. There were a lot of swimming pools and even a water park, but it was just a little bit too chilly to get in the water (although we did try them out!)

The boys all dressed and ready for a dip in the (freezing) pool!

The scenery out the car window during the drive from the airport to Sun City and the scenery out of our hotel room window was just beautiful and refreshing.

The view from the car window

The view from our hotel window

We had plenty of time to just monkey around as a family...with real monkeys even! The first day as we were unpacking our suitcase, Will looked out the window and said, “Look! There’s a bunch of monkeys out there!” And sure enough there were monkeys running around all over the place. It was unreal! They were fun to just sit and watch- they would chase each other, swing from the trees, tackle each other, pick through each other’s fur- all while you were standing right there! One time Will and Zach were bent over looking for four leaf clovers in the grass and when they looked up Nolan was face to face (with about one foot of space between them) with a huge baboon! Will said that when he looked up in total shock the big ol’ baboon just walked away!

Colby and Nolan checking out the little monkeys (they would let you get close, but they would scurry off if you tried to touch them)

The "big ol' baboon" that was checking Nolan out (and that's our hotel room right behind him)!

The monkeys were a huge hit, and so was all the good food!! The first night we ate a place with all African Fare and it was really, really good! It was a buffet and they had tons of different things to try, but it was hard to get super adventurous since none of the dishes were labeled! I would love to tell you all the wonderful African food we tried, but I have no idea what the dishes were called or even what was in them! But the food was great and the dessert table (with at least 25 different types of desserts) was over the top yummy! The next night we found a little pizza place that had all kinds of odd pizzas on the menu so we were a little leary, but the pizza was some of the best we’ve ever had! (It may just be that our taste buds are a little out of whack since we haven’t really had pizza in 3 months, but it was really good!) The pizza place had ice cream too, which we all indilgued in, since you can’t really get that here either! So, as pathetic as this sounds, we ate there three out of our 5 nights!! Oh, and a typical breakfast buffet had so many different choices, you would never believe it- on top of all the traditional breakfast foods, they had stews and casseroles as well as roasts and sushi! For breakfast! The fresh fruit and fresh squeezed fruit juices were a great treat too! Okay, enough about eating, although it was a highlight…

This is the breakfast of champions...in Africa! The boys thought they were in heaven eating pancakes with chocolate syrup, honey, whip cream and sprinkles for breakfast every morning! Yum!

One of our favorite things that we did in Sun City was go to the Crocodile Sanctuary. It was so cool. There were crocodiles everywhere and we even got to feed the baby crocodiles. Zach was the only brave kid to feed them, the other two didn't want to touch the food- frozen chicken feet!

They are just really neat animals and it was cool to be able to watch them up close (well, not too close). We saw one crocodile with half of the bottom of his mouth missing!

Zach feeding the baby crocodiles (below)

Will and Colby watching the crocodile "smile" for us

And on our last day we took a family photo...

Then we loaded up and went to the safari lodge...

Pope-ular Papa!

There's a total buzz around town right now since The Pope has been here, in Luanda, for the last 4 days! It's been pretty crazy. Even work was cancelled on Friday and Monday (the days the Pope was scheduled to be at the airport) because they predicted the traffic might be so bad that it could take the men 5 hours to get home from work (which is only 5 miles away). We were not on lock down or anything, but they did encourage us to stay on the compound if possible so as to avoid all of the choas surrounding the Pope's visit. We did not have a chance to actually go see him (for good reason- sadly 2 people got trampled in a stampede on Saturday while rushing to get a good seat to hear him speak), but it is pretty cool to think that he is in town while we are living here. The locals were all very excited to have him here too. There are posters up all over town with "Papas" face on them- they were taped to fences, store windows, brick buildings and the backs of taxis. An article I found on the internet reported: “Benedict arrived in Luanda on the second leg of his African tour, with tens of thousands pouring into the streets along his motorcade route, honking car horns and slowing traffic to a crawl. Many of the faithful wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the pope's picture and "Welcome to our land" written in Portuguese.” We enjoyed the extra days off and just hung out as a family. We had a cook-out with friends on Friday and I made potato salad for the first time ever, which was super yummy and in memory of this historical event (and to celebrate the extra days off) we renamed it "Pope-tato Salad"!

The Pope in the PopeMobile driving down the streets of Luanda

The REAL world

After explaining to Colby that you can't just go out and buy new things here (like Legos, Batman pajamas, and Fruit Roll-Ups) and that we have to wait to buy them when we go home to Houston for the summer he said, "Can't we just go back to the real world!?" Too funny! We already have a list of "real world" things to stock up on when we head home in June!

Water Weekend!

Phew! We spent a lot of time in the surf, sand and sun this weekend!

It's a holiday weekend (Internationl Women's Day) so we took advantage of the long weekend and went to the beach two different days!

The first day we went with our next door neighbors to an island (that you can see from our veranda) called Masula. It only takes about 2 minutes to get from our house to the marina, and then another 10 minutes or so to get from the marina to the island via a boat taxi service, if that's what you want to call it...

The boat can best be described as a rustic, bare bones, wooden looking fishing boat with a motor on the end of it! It did indeed get us to the island, but not without a 2 minute break in the middle of the ocean to wait for the motor to restart!

That was a bit crazy, but the rest of the day was very fun and relaxing. We did the usual beachy things as well as played baseball and looked for sand dollars.

The next day we went out on the Esso boat "Discovery" with some of our friends. We spent the majority of the day trying to fish off the boat. We didn't get any fish, but we did have a lot of fun just toodling around in the ocean! Before heading home we "parked" at the island and got out and played in the ocean for a little while. The kids had a blast just floating in the waves with their friends with their life vests on!

Beach day (above) & Boat day (below)