Wrapping Up South Africa

Well, now that our trip to South Africa was about a half year ago… I’m finally finishing up posting about it! Nice, huh?

The trip home was… well, lets be honest, I can’t remember what it was like anymore. But I did have a few pictures that sparked my memory…

The airport in Johannesburg has these nifty luggage carts that are made to go up and down escalators. This was my first time seeing this. And frankly, it’s FREAKY to roll that big cart onto an escalator and stand behind it. That takes faith. Ha!  Too bad it didn’t quite stay loaded properly in this instance!

Here was another first. The Egypt Air flight attendant instructed me to tuck a pillow between the belly (I was six months pregnant) and my seatbelt? Really?! He said it was safer for the baby.

Hmmnnn. There is a first time for everything. I had a nice little chuckle there in my seat with a pillow buckled in my seatbelt during take off and landing.

Indeed, baby wasn’t harmed. :)

Here we are approaching our land of sand…

And here is my little stinker, pretty happy on the airplane.

What an incredible two weeks it was.

The Gardens and The Farm (South Africa)

One of our last days in South Africa we got to ride around and see more of the area. We drove to and around Pretoria and visited the President’s House or Parliament or something? Honestly I can’t remember right and I feel awful about it too.  Tried to figure it out online and can’t. Can anyone help me? Anyway, we didn’t go in the building, we just looked at the view of Pretoria and enjoyed the gardens out front. The kids REALLY enjoyed the gardens out front, except for when they were racing and my boy got upset because he could never win. Poor lil’ guy.

Then we went to a good ol’ dairy farm and bought treats and saw cows and other animals and played in the little river and even watched Thinus shove away a goose (and almost get bit) to try to catch a fish with his bare hands. But it’s okay because he’s a vet! Ha! It was good times.

And here comes the photo dump.  Enjoy. :)

Johannesburg

I know it’s been forever since I blogged about our trip to South Africa. It was mooooonths ago now and I never intended for it to take so long for me to ‘document’ it on this blog. But alas, life has changed a bit recently and there hasn’t been much time to work on it.  But now I’m back at it. For today at least. I’m near the end and I’ve got to finish what I started!

So let’s pick up…

After a week in southern South Africa we flew up to Johannesburg for our second week. We were heading there to visit a friend of Mike’s from 12 years ago, and his wife and family.

This week was more low-key. We hung around, took naps, and the  kids played and played and played with their three new friends around the house.

They even did some swimming.

And got a bit cold. Which was no big surprise. There was NO WAY Mike or I was getting in that pool with them…

It was only 71 degrees! Brrrrr. That is seriously cold for swimming weather. Mike is the cold-water-baby of the family and he refuses to swim if the temperature is much less than 100. I’m not kidding.

But there was also rain. Lovely, refreshing rain!

There was train play.

Rabbits. (And a dog, a cat, chickens and a rooster!)

Our sweet little guest room out back.

Avocados falling from overhead.

So many avocados. It was like a dream.

My kids loved this funky tire swing.

And climbing the ladder to this tree…

… to jump onto the trampoline.

Girlie became addicted to yogurt cups.

And they had such fun with their new friends!

It was an incredibly relaxing week. More South Africa to come…

Betty’s Bay

Alas, our glorious time at the coast in South Africa drew to a close after about half  a week. Although the cool thing was is that it was so refreshing and relaxing it felt like we were there a lot longer!

The day came to drive back to Cape Town and catch our flight to Johannesburg.

The day was dreary and rainy, but we decided to take the coastal route anyway, just to see something new.

I still really enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t bright and sunny. I think we even saw another whale that day.

We knew there were penguins along the coast, but we didn’t expect to run into any. But we started seeing these signs (the blue one above) as we neared a place called Betty’s Bay.

So… we followed them to see us some penguins!

There was a special place built so that people like us could enjoy the penguins without disturbing them. First we read all about them.

Then we walked along the boardwalk.

There they are. Penguins everywhere. Thousands and thousands of penguins.

Baby penguins.

Molting penguins.

Swimming in the ocean penguins.

Up close and personal penguins.

Lookin’ right at ya penguins.

And these. These are not penguins.

They are my penguins-viewing companions and I’m so glad.

We looked at penguins for a long time.

The kids loved it. It involved animals and lots of running on a road-trip day so of course they loved it.

And then we climbed back in the car and continued our drive.

That day we drove up to Stellenbosch on our way to Cape Town. We saw some very interesting old homes at the Village Museum from various eras and really enjoyed it. It’s a super picturesque town and very old town. But I failed to take any pictures there. Oops.

Late that night we caught the red eye to Johannesburg to start week two of our South Africa trip…