Zambia, Zimbabwe, & Botswana

The week before Christmas this year we got to visit three amazing countries, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana!  We left on Doug's birthday, December 20 and managed to get 12 new stamps in our passports.



Victoria Fall's Bridge
No man's land.



We flew into Livingstone, Zambia and had hopped on the shuttle.  We crossed the border via the Victoria Falls Bridge.  When you're on the bridge your not in Zambia or Zimbabwe. 

Hotel Lobby

We stayed at The Kingdom Lodge in Victoria Falls.  They had the lobby all decorated for Christmas. 

Victoria Falls-Main Falls

On Tuesday morning we got to take a helicopter ride over the Zambezi River, the Victoria Falls Bridge, and the actual falls.  It was sooooo much fun!  We only got to ride for 15 minutes because it was VERY expensive!

The water is low right now so the falls aren't as massive as they are during the rainy season. When you are up in the helicopter you can really see the whole flood plain. The Zambezi river plain is wide and flat. When it gets to the falls it's just a huge gorge and on the other side it turns into huge canyons that the river flows through.

Here's the helicopter we rode in.

Tuesday afternoon we did the walking path at Victoria Falls National Park.  We took the rain forest path down to the bridge.  The special part about this rain forest is that it's been solely created by the mists from the waterfall.  The falls are the only reason it's there.

Here are some cool shots of the falls.




Danger Point-Main Falls

Devil's Cataract

On Wednesday Doug and Tyler went Tiger fishing on the Zambezi River.  They got to spend half the day on the river.  Unfortunately they didn't manage to bring anything in.  Tyler had one on the line that jumped out of the water but spit out the bait before he could real it in.  This is the end of the season and the fish are moving up stream since the water is rising.  They enjoyed the morning seeing the river and get to know the local fisherman that took them out.

Wednesday night we got to take a sunset cruise on the Zambezi River.  The shuttle picked us up and we got to see some African dancers before we shoved off. 

We got to enjoy some refreshments while we went for our ride.  This is the "official" beer of Zimbabwe. 

We saw lots and lots and lots of hippos!



Sunset on the Zambezi River



On Thursday we got to take a day trip to Chobe Park in Botswana.  It was such a beautiful country!  There are only 2 million people in the whole country!  Most of them live in cities around the border and the interior is very rural and wild still.  Chobe Park runs along the border of Botswana and Namibia.  The river we got to take our boat ride on is called the Chobe river here but once it crosses into Zimbabwe it changes to the Zambezi.

We saw lots of critters-Hippos,

crocodiles,

elephants,

African Jacana or Jesus Birds,

and best of all... lions! 

But the best part was getting to see a lion pride bring down and cape buffalo.  Our guide told us they are lucky to see the lions make a kill once a year.  And the majority of those kills are small game, impala or warthog.  But they never see them bring down big game like this!  It was a once and a lifetime experience.  The highlight of the whole trip!

We also got the lion kill video.  If you want to see follow this link to watch the YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeZ-UGZle04&feature=share

Friday, Christmas Eve, was our day to leave.  We hopped on the shuttle back to Livingstone, Zambia to catch the plane.  Here is the cool plane we got to ride on!

We had an awesome trip and it was an experience we will never forget!  Can't wait until our next adventure!

If you want to see some more pictures of our trip check out our Picassa web album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sjcinkc/VictoriaFalls#

There won't be snow in Africa at Christmas time...

We made a Christmas CD and one of the songs we downloaded was "Do they know it's Christmas?"  You know the classic Band-AID feed the world song?? 

Well, they definitely know it's Christmas here!  They don't do it up quite as crazy as us Americans but you can definitely feel the vibes.  It's been a little hard for us adjusting to the differences here for the Christmas season.  One, NO snow;  two, NO Santa lap to sit on to tell your wish list too; and three, NO candy canes!!!  WHAT?!

Tis the season though!



Me, Millie, and Kristie

 There is a great group of ladies here who have been helping out the last couple of years a local school called Riversands.  It's just up the road from AISJ, American International School of Johannesburg, where the boys attend.  It's a non-preforming school-basically it's not accredited- that educates 670 students on a daily basis that have come out of a huge township called Diepsloot.  Diepsloot has a population of  150,00 people and most of them live in a 3 meter by 2 meter shacks assembled with scrap metal, wood, and cardboard.

They were very excited to get their
picture taken!

A few years ago Millie, she's from South Africa, started a lunch program for these kids.  She understood that most of these kids come to school with empty bellies and that the only meal they would is the one provided by the school.  The only problem was, the school was not able to provide them with a nutritious meal everyday.  They could only provide the meal once a week and on the other days they were serving the kids pap, which is corn based, and tastes and looks a lot like thick cream of wheat.

Present time!

Miss Millie got to work and they are now receiving vegetables, noodles, and soup stock that are being graciously donated to the school by local vendors.  The kids are now up to three meals a week and sometimes more, depending on how donations are.

I was one of the lucky ladies who got to be involved with their Christmas party this year.  The schools here run from January to December instead of August to May like in the US.  These kids were getting to the end of the school year and they got to have a rockin party too! 



Mmmm!!! Chocolate
cupcakes from Woolies!





Look at all those goodie bags!



Each child was given a list of seven items they could pick from.  They were pretty basic choices, ball, car, tea set, doll, food hamper and few other things. And they each ended up with a gift bag containing their item plus sweets, writing utensils, stationary and an assortment of odds and ends they had leftover.

They also had a blow up obstacle course set up for them along with cupcakes, presents and just a fun laid back day for the kids to enjoy.

Drakensberg Mountains

We went to visit the Drakensburg Mountains over the holiday.  We stayed at the Drakensburg Sun Resort.  It was in a beautiful valley with all kinds of great stuff to do; canoeing on the pond, croquet, hiking, fly fishing, horseback riding and our favorite, the canopy tour.  We got there late on Thursday and we took advantage of the Qolf course  (A crazy cross between golf and croquet) and exploring the lodge.  It had a huge dining room with a balcony overlooking the pool and the lake, a lounge area with books and games and room for the kids to run and carry on.

Friday morning we got to take a guided horseback ride through the mountains around the lodge.  It was a little rainy and cool but we still got to take in some amazing views.  Unfortunately, riding on the back of a horse and managing to focus my camera didn't work out to well. 

The best part was the rockin' hairnets we had to wear under the helmets!

So the weather finally cleared up for the afternoon and we thought we'd do some hiking.  We left the lodge with sixteen people on our excursion; ranging in ages from one and a half to thirty eight.  Eight of those hikers were under twelve! 

We were quite the group.  Our goal was to do the 4 mile Blue Grotto hike.  It's estimated to take about 2 1/2 hours to complete. 

          

Here we are at the halfway point.  It is the Blue Grotto waterfall.  The water here  was very very cold but we got in anyway and were refreshed for the rest of the hike back.

 

Unfortunately on Friday night Clayton started to not feel very good.  He was up and down all night with a fever and upset tummy.  We had to cancel our original plans to go on the canopy tour Saturday morning and rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.  He still wasn't feeling the best but he toughed it out and we zipped through the trees. 

Here in South Africa they call the zip lines "Foofie Slides" but we can't quite get ourselves to say that without laughing, so it's still zip line for us.  We hired the filmographer to go with us so he could take pictures and unfortunately he had all sorts of trouble with the video part of the camera so it's not a clear as it could have been.

Drakensberg Canopy Tour  -  Click on the link to see our adventure!



Left to right: Beauty, Tyler, Clayton(in front), Stephanie, Doug, The Water Girl(In Front), Mandy, Brian, and Casper.

   

It was so cool to see the trees from above instead of below!  We got to ride the second fastest zip line in South Africa- WHEW!  It just took your breath away!  We had about a 20 minute hike back up from the last zip line to the top.  It was the toughest part of the whole weekend.

Cathkin Peak

Back In Business-Happy Thanksgiving!

So I think I am finally back in business!

I was having trouble with blogger.com and I think it was because Doug downloaded some new "Beta" version of explorer... whatever that means? So we downloaded the older version and hopefully we'll be good-to-go!

We decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner at our house the Sunday before we Thanksgiving because we were going to on "Holiday" over the actual Thanksgiving holiday.  It was my first attempt at a turkey all on my own!  The turkey's here run around 5 or 6 pounds each so I lucked out in finding a Jennie-O about 13 pounds!  I think it was the biggest Turkey in South Africa!

We were afraid we wouldn't have enough enough meat so Doug decided to smoke a couple of chickens on the Weber (Weeber).  He brined it in cranberry juice and rubbed it down with spices and brown sugar!  YUM!

It was about 90 degrees that day so a dip in the pool was called for before grub time!

We were afraid we wouldn't have enough food!

Time to eat!   Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Clayton had a parade and party at school. He was a cowboy and he got to wrap up Miss Gill like a mummy at the mummy race!

Here's our group of goofy guys! They all look pretty cool!

.

Since they don't have pumpkins here, as it's the wrong time of the year, we had to make our own. Jack-

Lantern pickle jars!