Hotswana

Things we will miss

2009-07-05T06:21:00.007+02:00

With less than 3 weeks left in Botswana, we have been thinking about some of the things we will miss from here...

Incredibly blue skies:

Botswana grass fed beef (and it's cheaper than chicken):

Giraffes:

The Bull and Bush:

Particulary the cow statue at Bull and Bush which Debra thinks would look fabulous on the front porch of our new house in Atlanta. Thom disagrees for some reason.

Signs that Amuse Us

2009-05-25T15:10:00.003+02:00

From Mokolodi, an important reminder for everyone:

Those darn lawyers have just ruined everything:

The fish don't like it when children throw rocks at them:

Debra's all time favorite HIV prevention message from outside Gaborone City Council:

Fight AIDS because it's messy.

Last Trip to Madikwe or Why Tau is our Favorite Game Lodge

2009-04-05T11:51:00.030+02:00

Last weekend, we went to Madikwe for what most likely will be our last trip there. We booked at Tau Game Lodge (http://www.taugamelodge.co.za/) for several reasons:

It is very easy to get there from Gaborone.
Tau is built around a very large watering hole.
Customer service is better there than almost anywhere else in southern Africa.

We will show you just how easy it is to get to Tau from Gaborone.

Here is Thom looking rugged driving the truck from Gaborone to Tau:

Here are the cows hanging around the border:

This is the Botswana border post (about 20 minutes to get there from where we work):

For the Botswana legalities, you park, get out of the vehicle, walk inside, sign the vehicle registration log, turn in your passports (along with the Botswana immigration form which we have filled out ahead of time having learned from past experience that there are no pens to borrow at the border), get an exit stamp and a gate pass, get your gate pass stamped, get back in your vehicle, drive to the exit, hand in your gate pass and drive a very short distance to the South Africa border. This is the South Africa border post:

For South Africa legalities, you park your vehicle and walk inside, you turn in your passports, they put a visa stamp in your passport, you get a gate pass, get back in your vehicle, drive to the exit, and hand in your gate pass and you are on your way.

Once you are fully across the border, you take almost an immediate left to enter Madikwe Game Reserve.
You drive on the dirt road for about 15 minutes. As we have a very rugged truck we took this opportunity to drive very fast on the very bumpy dirt road. Then you turn right when you see the sign for Tau:
At the gate you have to fill out some paperwork to enter and declare whether you have firearms(we did not have firearms even though Debra feels this would be the most effective spider abatement system). The gate attendent has been studying Spanish while sitting in the gatehouse for hours and hours and was very anxious to ask us all questions in Spanish (important safety note: When asked in Spanish if you speak spanish say "huh", rather than being clever and saying "un poquito"). After that, you drive another 10 minutes to get to the lodge. Notice the electric fencing on the ground at the lodge entrance to keep the scary animals out of the lodge:
And that's it. About an hour total travel time including the border crossing.

So then there's the watering hole. This what we saw from the watering hole.

Impala, water buck, and a wildebeast:

Elephants:
A female lion (Debra wants full credit for spotting this lion from the lodge deck while gathering for afternoon tea):

We actually saw a lot more at the watering hole but Debra was in charge of photography this trip...

We really should have just stayed at the lodge because we saw a lot more there than on the game drives. Unfortunately we had the worst ranger ever. He actually took us to see a dead wildebeast and thought we would be happy about that.

And now a word about customer service at Tau. One of the staff asked if we had enjoyed our lunch and we mentioned that the food is always very nice at Tau. Thom told them that we always hope that we will have the same lunch that we had the first time we went to Tau 4 years ago. He even described the entree which was a cashew encrusted chicken. The staff member asked if we had told anyone in the kitchen about this wish and we laughed and said we hadn't. That night at dinner we were told that one of the entrees was by special request and when the waiter came to our table, he told us that the chef had prepared the chicken as we had requested, breaded chicken fillet with peanut butter sauce. Hmmmm. OK, so not exactly what we had requested but it was still really good.

Also a note to those who have been to Tau in the past. They are in the process of remodeling and extending the chalets. We got one of the newly remodeled chalets with a lounge area (cool, huh?):

And, of course, we must end with a sunset photo -- sundowners at Madikwe:

This week in Botswana

2009-03-07T11:27:00.004+02:00

We realize we have been neglecting the blog but we haven't managed to get any good photos lately. So this will be a non-illustrated blog. Just words. Non-readers, considered yourselves fairly warned and go no further. For the rest of you...this is what life has been like this week here in Botswana...

Last Saturday as we attempted the grocery shopping at 8:30 in the morning to avoid the end of month shopping stampede, we came to realize that none of the shops had tomatoes for sale. By Monday afternoon when we still could not find any tomatoes in town, we started asking around. What we learned was that due to the complaint of one local farmer re: his inability to sell his tomatoes, the Ministry of Agriculture shut the border to tomato imports. Obviously the Botswana tomato farmer sold all of his crops in about 10 minutes which left the whole country without tomatoes for the week. Yesterday afternoon at the Gaborone Yacht Club, we randomly met some agriculture type people: a farmer from Canada who is into some kind of farming here in Botswana, a man from the Royal Agricultural Society of Scotland who sells all of his wheat to the makers of Gordon's Gin, and 2 guys from Australia here in town to sell their crop management software system to the Canadian. This group theorized that Botswana regulary supplies about 15% of the regular demand for tomatoes and 85% is supplied through imports. And this is what led to the drastic shortage of the week.

More importantly though, tomatoes were back in the shops on Thursday. And now we can go back to full time complaining about what is really bothering us this week. Apparently in an extreme over reaction to the cholera in Zimbabwe, Botswana has begun over-treating the water here. It's terribly safe but tastes terrible. We've had to start using all bottled water for drinking water. This drives Thom crazy but Debra refuses to drink coffee that tastes bad.

When we take a break from the complaining about the hardships of the week, we are thoroughly enjoying a gorgeous weekend. It's a pleasant 80 degrees today with a slight breeze. The sky could not be bluer. The air could not be cleaner. The plants are all still green and blooming from another very good rainy season. Life really isn't all that bad.

Giraffe Tracking

2009-01-19T11:59:00.015+02:00

Today is an American Holiday (Martin Luther King Day) which means as US Government employees we have the day off but not many other people do in Botswana. So we used the opportunity to book a Giraffe Tracking Adventure at Mokolodi (http://www.mokolodi.com/activities.php).

We arrived at Mokolodi at 7:30 this morning. Our group consisted of a guide/driver, a tracker, and Thom and Debra. This is why we do things on American holidays.

Our guide Kesa explained we would drive until we spotted giraffe tracks and then get out and try to track the giraffes. He told us that we should let him know if we thought we saw any giraffe tracks and they would get out and track them if they actually were giraffe tracks. We quickly realized we've never really paid any attention to giraffe tracks but after some discussion decided we could probably tell the difference between giraffe tracks and leopard tracks. But nothing any more complicated than that. Fortunately we had an expert tracker, David. After about 20 minutes driving toward the south end of the game park, David spotted the tracks. We pulled off road and started tracking. In case you are wondering, giraffe tracks are long narrow 2-toed hoof prints.

For about 30 minutes we hiked through the bush following the giraffe tracks. It turns out that giraffes walk through a lot of spaces you wouldn't think they could go. They walk over rocks and through mud and in between bushes and trees that are really close together.

Fortunately it had rained (hard!) the night before so it cooled things off a bit because it was a hot sweaty hike. Also, the guide told us that it is really a lot easier to track anything when all the old tracks are wiped and the ground is soft to make new tracks. But then we saw our first giraffe! Absolutely amazing!

Our first giraffe sighting

And a little further in, we came across a journey of 8 giraffes. 3 of this group were about a year old and very small compared to the others. And for the next 20 minutes or so we followed them around but we couldn't keep up with them. They are very fast and quite fascinating when they run in a group.

Getting a little closer to a giraffe

After our time with the giraffes, David led us back to the truck in less than 10 minutes. That was also impressive.

The rest of our morning was quite fabulous. We saw a large herd of wildebeast, lots of ostriches running around, herds of kudo and impala, zebra, warthogs, a pack of jackals which was cool -- we had never seen them before. Thom got to stop in to see his friends, the cheetahs, who really had not yet woken up for the day. And then on the way out of the park, we saw 3 rhino. A very satisfactory morning.

The cheetahs sleeping very hard

At least one cheetah woke up enough to be petted (after Thom poked it)

March on the cake!

2008-12-21T06:36:00.008+02:00

Here in Botswana, at the US Mission in Gaborone, we celebrated the 233rd birthday of the Marine Corps on November 14. This is a Marine tradition started in the 1920s and Marines celebrate the birthday of the Corps wherever they are. We have a detachment of Marines at our Embassy and so then, we get to attend the Marine Birthday Ball.

Some photos from this year's Ball:

Gaborone Marine Detachment

March on the Colors!

Guest of Honor, Ambassador Stephen Nolan

March on the Cake!

Cutting the cake with a sword

This year's cake

It's tradition that the oldest Marine in the area gets the 2nd piece of cake -- this guy has been getting that 2nd piece of cake for about 17 years now.

Thom and Debra with 2 of our Marines. We were busy talking and missed the group shots with all the Marines.
...

Thanksgiving in Botswana

2008-11-28T06:26:00.012+02:00

Yesterday was the first Thanksgiving we have hosted together (side note: today is our 2nd weddding anniversary). We co-hosted the event with our friends Kim and Luke and ended up with 20 people total for dinner. Once we moved all the furniture out of the living room, we had room to set up 2 long tables.

We have the only airconditioned kitchen in the Embassy housing pool, and since the high yesterday was 98F, it made sense that we would host the event. Our first guests showed up an hour early at 3:00 instead of 4:00 but we were on schedule and were happy to have some time to catch up with them while we finished the last minute prep activities.

Dinner turned out quite nice with all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods...some slightly modified because you just can't get the same stuff here (for example, there's not a can of sweet potatoes in the whole country so you use the variation of yam that's closest to the sweet potato that you can get here and add a lot more butter, cinnamon and sugar for flavor)...everyone who came brought a dish and just like Thanksgiving should be, we had way more food than any group of 20 people could ever eat.

Cool side note: we ended up having a true Thanksgiving celebrity at our house. One of our guests was the daughter of the man responsible for the turkey pop up timer. How about that!

Thom making the buttermilk biscuits

The Perfect Pumpkin Pies

Thanksgiving is an American holiday. It's celebrated in Botswana only by Americans. It makes it a little more meaningful when you are the minority celebrating the day here and you know all your friends and family back home are also celebrating the day. That's not to say that an American Thanksgiving is a complete mystery here. About a week before Thanksgiving 7.5 kg Turkeys appeared in a freezer case at one of the bigger name shops and a letter was sent to the American Embassy apprising us of the recent development. There were a lot of questions from local staff just how we prepare a turkey as it is not a food that is normally eaten here and certainly not as a meal that is looked forward to.

Thom's favorite Thanksgiving tradition is to require everyone to say at least one thing that they are thankful for. As we went around the room, we realized just how blessed we are. As we reflect on the day after Thanksgiving, here are some other things for which we are thankful:

good food and good friends
being able to stay in touch with friends and family back home through modern technology
pourable buttermilk (a Thanksgiving miracle!)
the electricity stayed on the whole evening
lots of leftovers in our house including 2 leftover dressing balls ("left over" by a combination of luck and sneakiness)
our fantastic maid Lucy who did all the hard cleaning up on Friday and helped put our house back together again
the Botswana adventure

Victoria Falls - 2008

2008-11-09T15:31:00.012+02:00

October 31 - November 3, we went to Victoria Falls. This was Thom's second trip to the Falls and Debra's first trip. We were traveling with friends from the Washington, DC area: Mandy, Joanne, Sue, and Ruth.

As we may have mentioned before, traveling outside of Botswana is never simple. Victoria Falls is on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe so to see the Falls, you have to go to either Zambia or Zimbabwe. State Department still has a warning to avoid travel to Zimbabwe so we went to Zambia and followed the same route that Thom took in January 2007.

We flew to Kasane (2 hours from Gaborone). We were met by a tour company called Wild Horizons that took us by van to the border (about a 20 minute drive). We filled out our paperwork and cleared immigration at the Botswana border and then drove just a little further to the river -- The Great Zambezi River. At the river we were met by a small speedy boat that took us across the river in about 5 minutes. Then we had to deal with locals trying to sell over- priced trinkets (including a Zimbabwean Billion Dollar Bill) to stupid Americans. After that we had to clear immigration on the Zambia border. And another van took us the rest of the way to our hotel -- about an hour drive.

We stayed in Livingstone, Zambia at the Zambezi Sun. It was a nice hotel but it had too many monkeys. Seriously, we watched one monkey eat all the french fries right off the plate of a guy sitting at a table next to us. And breakfast was quite the show with the waiters also running off the monkeys that were trying to steal everyone's food.

The water level at Victoria Falls is at it's lowest right now. The rainy season stopped around April and we've only had a few showers since the beginning of October. So the water was very low at the Falls.

OK...it wasn't quite that low. We saw a lot more canyon than what you see most of the year, but there was still a lot of water a little further down closer to Zimbabwe than where we were.

For a comparison of the Falls at high water level, refer to Thom's blog entry from 2007: http://hotswana.blogspot.com/2007/04/victoria-falls-part2-wow.html

More photos of our adventures at Vic Falls can be viewed at shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3tw

And now our ending sunset photo, sunset on the Zambezi River:

Zanzibar

2008-10-19T09:18:00.009+02:00

So we went to Zanzibar for the Columbus Day weekend. Sounds exotic, doesn't it? We met up with CDC friends who are currently working in Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

It is not easy to get most places from Botswana. Zanzibar did not prove to be an exception. We left Gaborone on a 10:00 flight Friday morning and arrived at the hotel a little after 10:00 pm that night (there's a 1 hour time difference between Botswana and Tanzania). We flew from Gaborone to Johannesburg. There was a 1 hour delay posted for our flight (the airline desk said, "it's always late"). We ended up spending an extra 90 minutes in the airport before the flight was ready to go. It was about a 3 hour flight to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Everyone going to Zanzibar and Kilimanjaro was told to stay on the plane. Then after everyone else got off, we were taken to a very little plane. And then it was about a 20 minute flight to Zanzibar. We managed to clear immigration and customs without any problems and we had transport waiting for us. And then it was over an hour drive to our hotel.

And it was not an easy drive. For over half of the drive, we were on a very narrow, very dark road. And it's a common practice that people sit along the side of the road because it's "cooler" than sitting on the ground. The very last 10 minutes of drive was through a little village, dirt roads, badly rutted, very dark. It was a little hard to believe that we were actually going to a beach hotel.

But we finally arrived at the Z (Zed) Hotel (http://www.thezhotel.com/hotel.htm). The hotel was quite nice and right on the beach. The water was beautiful. The weather was fabulous -- hot and steamy. The hotel was very accommodating even arranging for babsitters to watch the kids so the grown ups could have dinners together. And there were a lot of kids (8 between the ages of 1 and 8). The only serious complaint about the hotel was they served instant coffee for breakfast (darn British influence). Not at all acceptable. Fortunately there was a coffee shop just outside the hotel grounds.

Thom and his friend Brad were able to book an afternoon dive trip and had a really good time. Diving from a wooden dhow was an interesting experience for Thom.

Although not highly developed on this part of the island, there is an abundance of "salesmen" all up and down the beach trying to persuade you check out shops for sarongs and "art". Walking on the beach was not a relaxing experience at all. But the sunsets were spectacular.

Monday we had to return to Gaborone and the trip home was just as bad as the trip getting there. We had to leave the hotel at 6:30 am only to get to the airport and find out that the flight was delayed for an hour (the hotel had tried to call several times the day before to confirm the flight and could not get through). The gate area was very crowded and not air conditioned. There was no coffee. Tortuously ironically the duty free shop sold Tanzanian coffee beans. Debra considered buying some to chew on but managed to resist the urge and survived on coke. The flight left 90 minutes later than scheduled which meant we were late getting to Johannesburg and just barely caught our flight to Gaborone. Our luggage finally caught up with us on Wednedsay. We were cranky for a few days.

Many, many more photos of Zanzibar can be viewed at Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3lQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5

Sun City

2008-09-01T15:22:00.011+02:00

For the Labor Day holiday weekend, we took a little trip to Sun City, South Africa). Located just across the border, it's a fairly easy 3 hour drive from Gaborone. It's very much like Las Vegas or Disney (without people dressed in animal costumes, although one large baboon we saw could have been a person dressed in a baboon suit).

We were quite fortunate to be able to stay at the Palace of the Lost City which has a made up legend, fabulous customer service, and totally over the top motif. Bascially, Sun City was built in a vast wasteland (similar to Vegas, really) so it is really incredible what is there.

Entrance to The Palace:

The Crystal Court (main restaurant in The Palace):

Debra was somewhat concerned about the brush fires on the trip to Sun City and burning the hill just behind the hotel.

This is the fire line on the hill at night:

This is the hill the next day:

Thom was not so worrried and believes it is just the local practice of clearing the underbrush every year. Fortunately Thom was not entirely wrong about this and we were not burned down in the hotel or worse yet, made to evacuate in the middle of the night.

Another hazard of the hotel would be the monkeys. We saw only a few but the warning signs are quite worrisome.

Sign going from the hotel to the pool:

Sign on the bedroom balacony door:

Click here for more photos of our Sun City excursion.

Best Vacation Ever

2008-08-02T14:31:00.012+02:00

In July we spent 3 weeks in the fabulous Florida Keys. Because it is still winter here in Botswana, we were looking for a hot, steamy destination and the Keys did not disappoint. Temperatures averaged in the 90s with about 150% relative humidity. Night time temps were in the 80s.

For those who don't know, the Florida Keys are ~120-mile series of islands joined by 42 bridges including Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, and Key West (but also many lesser known islands such as Big Pine Key, Pigeon Key, Cudjoe Key, and No Name Key). The bridges were first built in the early 20th century for the Overseas Railroad (a project some call Flagler's Folly). The plan was to eventually build the railroad to Cuba but a Category 5 hurricane in 1935 put an end to the railroad. The railroad bridges were converted to highway bridges and in the 1980s, many new bridges were built alongside the old bridges, which are mostly used as fishing bridges now.

We made it to the Keys in time for the Key Largo 4th of July parade. It is one of the best small town parades. The kids get more candy at this parade than they do at Halloween. For the rest of the 4th we had hot dogs with Deb's sister and her family (who live in Islamorada) and watched the fireworks from the neighbor's dock.

Key West is the best known of the Florida Keys. We made 2 trips down to Key West. Ernest Hemingway is one of the best known historical residents of Key West. We happened to be in Key West for the annual Hemingway Look Alike contest (http://www.eitb24.com/noticia/en/B24_105894).

Although the Mallory Square Dock Sunset Celebration is the most recommended way to watch the sun set we opted for a sunset cruise on the Sebago catamaran (http://www.keywestsebago.com/sunset.php). We had a lovely 2 hour cruise complete with a couple of dolphins frolicking along side the boat.

Thom used the opportunity of being in the Keys to get his open water dive certification from the Florida Keys Dive Center (commonly known as Flakey's around town): http://www.floridakeysdivectr.com/

He completed 10 dives during the 3 weeks we spent in the Keys. He made his last 2 dives with Chris, Deb's brother-in-law and they dove on a wreck called the "Eagle" which sits in about 100 feet of water.

We also ate a lot of fabulous food on this vacation. Sure there was a lot of Key Lime Pie but we also had amazingly good fish (mahi mahi, yellow tail snapper, grouper, etc.) -- which basically just jumps out of the water and on to your plate. We highly recommend the Island Fish Company in Marathon (http://www.islandfishco.com/), Snapper's in Tavernier, and the Island Grill in Islamorada (http://www.keysislandgrill.com/). About the only time we weren't eating fish we were at Chad's in Tavernier having some of the best sandwiches ever.

We spent so much time doing stuff and relaxing that we kept forgetting to take pictures. Here are a couple from the trip:

Thom on the dive boat with his dive equipment

The view from our favorite restaurant, the Island Fish Company in Marathon

Chobe National Park

2008-06-28T14:14:00.009+02:00

The weekend of June 13-15, we met up with Thom's sister Kristen and her partner (in crime) Greg in Chobe.

Chobe is a very large game park in Northern Botswana, a 2 hour flight from Gaborone. It is best known for it's extremely large elephant population.

We stayed at the Chobe Game Lodge in the game park overlooking the Chobe River:

We did see a lot of elephants...

But we also had a very cool experience with some giraffes...

Then the Cape buffalo came down to the river to drink and the giraffes and buffalo were just hanging around together.

For many more pictures particularly of giraffes and elephants, you can view our photos on Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3ew&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5

Thom's Dad Comes to Africa!

2008-05-18T16:31:00.008+02:00

Lately it seems that work has got in the way of our blogging. Most of March through the first week of April Debra was tied up with the review of the clinical trial she works for here in Botswana (if you are interested in learning more about some of the work we do here in Botswana, see CDC's web site: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/prep.htm). Thom has been involved with several activities but the move of CDC headquarters offices here in Gaborone has kept him overly busy the last few weeks. The move is scheduled for May 30 so hopefully it will be behind us soon.

Meanwhile, we did manage to squeeze in a little fun and were very happy that Thom's father (Tom I) could pay us a visit in April. Debra was back in DC for training during most of the time that Tom I was here so Thom II took Tom I to Madikwe for a manly safari adventure.

The manly men stayed at Jaci's Tree Lodge (http://www.madikwe.com/tree_lodge.htm) which happens to have a resident mongoose family (how cool is that!).

More photos of the lodge:

Jaci's Tree Lodge also has a small watering hole with a blind. The highlight of our trip occurred right there at the Lodge watering hole when a giraffe wandered in for a drink. The entire encounter took over 45 minutes as the Giraffe was very cautious and was not thrilled that we were there. Strangely, when we finally started talking the giraffe relaxed and finally got into position to drink.

Of course, a trip to Botswana would not be complete without stopping in to visit the cheetahs at Mokolodi.

The Wild Dogs at Madikwe

2008-03-08T15:10:00.008+02:00

On our trip to Madikwe at the end of February we had a very cool experience. We mentioned to our guide, Pule, that Thom really wanted to see the wild dogs. When we were at Madikwe last May we saw a few wild dogs in the boma that were about to be released to integrate with the packs in the park but it wasn't quite the same as seeing the dogs out and about in the wild.

The wild dogs are very special. They are the most endangered predator in the world. They are also known as the "painted dogs" and have never been successfully domesticated. They hunt for fun as as well a food and most game parks can't handle having many if any of the animals. Madikwe has a few small packs that are constantly on the move which makes them very difficult to site. We know because we have driven many, many miles all over the park looking for those dogs.

On this game drive, our guide Pule headed off for where the dogs had been spotted the morning before. We drove quite a while and then on one narrow road, we came across another safari vehicle heading in the opposite direction. They assured us that nothing had been seen from the direction they had come. But Pule persisted feeling confident that the dogs would be close since they had fed well that morning and the day had been too hot for them to want to roam about.

About 2 minutes after we left the other vehicle, Pule spotted some ears sticking up about 500 feet off road. We took off in the direction of the ears and came up on the pack just hanging out. They were a little disturbed at first by our presence but the heat soon convinced them that they should settle back down and continue their rest. This gave us an amazing opportunity to observe the pack very closely for about 20 minutes.

our first glimpse of the dogs:

the dogs settling down under a shady tree:

just hanging out with the dogs:

see how close Thom is to the dogs:

To see many, many more photos of the wild dogs and other things that we saw on this trip to Madikwe, you can view our photos at Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3WQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5

The Elephant Who Came to Breakfast

2008-03-01T15:07:00.012+02:00

Thom's mother Kathie came for a visit at the end of February. We took her to Madikwe for a night and stayed at Buffalo Ridge Safari Lodge (http://buffaloridgesafari.com/). It's one of the community lodges in Madikwe, managed and staffed by a local community. When we arrived, the manager told us that we were having crocodile ribs for lunch. We immediately thought of Fred Flinstone and his big rack of ribs on top of the car. Thom was really looking forward to tackling such ribs. Lunch turned out to be quite nice even though the entree was crocodile WRAPS -- not ribs. Grilled croc meat, asparagus, cucumber, tomato, too many carrots served in a tortilla wrap.

Anyway, this blog is actually about the Friday morning game drive. When we stopped for morning coffee, our guide noticed that there was an elephant far in the distance coming our way. He told us that although he wouldn't have stopped if he had seen the elephant before stopping, we should be able to finish coffee before the elephant got to us if he continued on the path it seemed he was taking. So we had coffee and hot chocolate while we watched the elephant come closer and closer.

When our guide noticed that the elephant was traveling much faster than it had appeared and not veering from the "road", he quickly packed up the coffee stuff and told us to get in the truck...NOW.

We, of course, obeyed immediately. As our guide mentioned, we really did not want to become famous for being trampled by an elephant on an early morning game drive. Our guide positioned the vehicle so that we could get out of the way of the elephant no matter which direction he decided to take and we had to do a bit of manuevering as the elephant approached. It turned out that the elephant was very cranky. Evidently he had struck out on the elephant club scene the night before and was still looking for "a date".

The cranky elephant did pass by without bothering us and we went on our way to enjoy the rest of our game drive.

If you have a lot of extra time and want to see more of our photos from this adventure in Madikwe, you can view our photos at shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3WQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5

Penguins in Africa

2008-02-12T17:49:00.002+02:00

Did you know there are penguins in Africa? We went down to Boulders Bay in the South African Cape Peninsula National Park this weekend and visited the penguin colony.

This is the welcome sign to the park (note, no shaking hands with penguins is allowed):

This was the first penguin we saw. He came out to meet us as we entered the walkway to the park:

Then we saw all these penguins on a boulder in the distance...

And then we got really close to them!

See how close Debra is to the penguins! (but she is not shaking hands with them...)

These are the penguins sitting on nests:

If you look really close you can see some of the dark gray fluffy baby penguins:

These guys were such posers! Seriously they just stood on this rock and posed. We guess they make extra money doing that.

The Dark Ages

2008-02-03T07:40:00.000+02:00

You may have read some of the recent coverage about the power shortage in South Africa (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7208628.stm). SA has recently determined that they do not produce enough power for their country and for the past several weeks have been doing rolling power outages throughout the big cities. Some of the stories that have been reported on the local news is that parts of Pretoria have gone without power for 8 hours per day; the cable car going up Table Mountain in Cape Town lost power and people were stuck in those cable cars for 3 hours; there are no generators left to buy in SA, etc., etc., etc. Directly related to this power shortage, the Rand has fallen to 7.4 to the $. Back in November it was 6.5 to the $. Thom's new favorite joke: What did they use for light in South Africa before candles? Answer: Electricity!.

How does this affect us, you might ask. Botswana relies heavily on SA for much of its electricity. There was already a plan for SA to decrease contracted power coming to Botswana and plans are underway for Botswana to begin producing its own power by 2010. So starting in January this year, we have a little less power coming into Bots from SA. That was manageable. However, Botswana also contracts with Mozambique for some power and that gets routed through Zimbabwe. Evidently Zimbabwe has lines down right now and has been very slow to make repairs and that along with the other cut has had a serious impact on life here because Botswana has had to initiate rolling power outages to manage the power shortage we're now experiencing.

Monday was the worst. We lost power for almost 8 hours (6:30 am until after 2:00 pm). Tuesday we were out from 3:30 pm until after 6:00 pm. Wednesday it was 7:15 am until 9:30 am that we had no power. No warning was given that power was going to be cut off. And all these outages affected home as well as work since we live so close to where we work. Friday evening we lost power in the middle of a party just as it got really dark. We managed to get more candles lit and served dessert before the ice cream melted so no real crisis.

Our friends and co-workers who have lived here for a long time are having the hardest time dealing with the recent development. Botswana has enjoyed uninterrupted power supply for decades and no one is prepared to go long periods of time without power. We, of course, are coping quite well, with only an occasional tantrum and/or melt down (for example, if the power goes out before the coffee gets made, that's a crisis situation). We could use a few more candles though...

Movie Night

2008-01-15T06:27:00.000+02:00

We tend to focus on the exotic aspects of living in Botswana, but we also have regular, ordinary adventures as well. Last night, we went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets at the Riverwalk Cinemas. It only has 4 screens and we don't always get the newest movies but we do get most of the really popular movies fairly soon after they are released and it turns out there are a lot of perks to going there. We left work at 5:10 with plenty of time to get to the 5:30 movie.

The usual cost of a movie ticket is 30 Pula (about $5) but on Mondays you can get 2 for 1 tickets. One of the cell phone providers has a code that you send by text message to a phone number that is provided on a poster in their shop window directly across from the movie place. They send you back a text message with a different code that you give to the box office when you buy your movie tickets. And then you only get charged for 1 ticket. So we got 2 tickets for the movie for 30 Pula (about $5).

So when you buy your tickets, you have to pick out your seats and they show you a seating chart which happens to be totally backwards from the layout in the theater. But you get to pick your seats and even if you are the only person in the theater, if you do not sit in the seat that you chose, they will make you move back to your assigned seat. So we carefully chose our seats and paid the 30 Pula for the tickets.

Then we got some popcorn and a coke and some M&Ms for 26.50 Pula (about $4.40) making our movie date total expenses less than $10.

There were about 10 other people watching the movie with us last night. A much larger crowd than usual for a Monday night. We thoroughly enjoyed the movie and had a lovely evening.

A Green Christmas

2007-12-29T07:54:00.000+02:00

When we were on vacation in Maryland earlier this month, we went to the NASA Goddard Visitor Center with Deb's friend Mandy. They have this cool spherical screen that they use for all kinds of educational purpose but they showed it to us just for fun. One program they ran was the weather for the past 30 days and they zoomed in on Botswana and we said, "Wow, looks like Botswana has been getting a lot of rain while we've been away." That was something of an understatement.

Yesterday after work, we drove out to Mokolodi, the local game park, just to see what was going on out there over the holidays. When we were out there in July, we made a donation for drought relief because the situation had become so bad that they were shipping out some of the DLA because there wasn't enough plant life to feed them all.

However, these days, it's freakishly green!!!

There's plenty of grass for all the DLA and even the little baby DLA!

At World's View overlooking the park:

From World's View -- that's the Gaborone Dam (the city reservoir) in the background. There's lots of water!!

Here is our rugged Toyota Hilux Surf at World's View:

The rain has had a rather negative effect on the roads through the park, so Thom enjoyed some serious 4-wheel driving. Apparently the rain has also washed out a few of the "do not enter" markers for some of the roads that are off limits to the drive-your-self-ers and we accidentally ended up in some quite dodgy territory. But we lived to tell about it and did not have to be rescued by the Park Rangers (which would have been terribly embarrassing) so just another part of the adventure.

Unbelievably this is the lake in the park. In July it was barely a mud puddle:

And then there were the giraffes!

We saw this one shortly after we entered the park:

And then coming down from World's View we came across this one:

Don't you think they're looking a little fat these days?

Happy Holidays from Hotswana!!!

We're back from vacation!

2007-12-16T10:11:00.000+02:00

First we want to reassure our readers that we have not fallen off the edge of the earth. We have just returned to Botswana after 4 weeks of vacation. We put about 2500 miles on a rental car and had a great time visiting with family and friends in 6 states and the District of Columbia. A few lessons learned from our trip: 1) contrary to what we thought before, it is NOT impossible to take 4 weeks off from work -- they will survive without us; 2) it is not the best idea to eat all your favorite foods every day for 4 weeks straight; 3) we do not like cold weather.

It snowed while we were in Washington, DC (see below).

We had a fantastic time at the National Air and Space Museum which turns out has expanded to 2 facilities.

After being away for 4 weeks, it was really good to come home. We are now busily getting ready for celebrating Christmas in Hotswana where the temps have been around 100 all week. Looks like we might have some rain today though.

Chicken Art

2007-11-10T16:13:00.000+02:00

This is a new addtion to our back yard. We found it a craft fair last weekend and just couldn't resist. Thom named him Tenders.

Cape Town in the Spring

2007-10-17T05:50:00.000+02:00

To celebrate Thom's birthday, we planned a little getaway for Columbus Day weekend. We ended up driving to Johannesburg on Friday, spent the night at a hotel close to the airport, and then flew down to Cape Town on Saturday. We love Cape Town. It's so refreshing to be on the coast or down town at the Waterfront. It's a special treat after spending months in the desert.

This time we stayed right on the beach in Camps Bay. And we managed to lose our camera so all of our photos for this blog are borrowed from other websites.

We stayed at the Fairways which was nice.

But the best feature of this hotel is the restaurant Luigi's. We had dinner there Saturday night and it was unquestionably the best Italian food we have had in a very long time.

Our other fabulous restaurant experience was Codfather's. Codfather's was recommended to us by a friend who had also given us the driving directions to Johannesburg and we're just not sure if she was trying to kill us or not. After the driving directions experience we were somewhat skeptical of the restaurant she recommended. It turned out we were pleasantly surprised. At Codfather's, you get to pick your food from the fresh seafood case and you can mix and match and then they cook it perfectly. We had tuna steak, sword fish, local mahi mahi which is called something else, and prawns from Mozambique the size of lobsters (they're truly too big to be called shrimp). It was a delightful experience.

It was a just a bit too chilly and way too rainy to really enjoy being on the beach. It rained all day Sunday. We tried going down to the Waterfront and even made it to the Green Market Square craft market in a break in the rain:

The craft market experience is similar to many places in Africa and many of the "shops" have the same stuff that everyone else has. There's the typical hard sell approach because you'll find the same thing at the next shop and maybe they'll make you a better deal. When we first got there, everyone was pressuring us to come inside their booths and look at there stuff more closely. As soon as it started raining, the message changed to "buy something and then you can come inside to get 'free' shelter".

We ended up going back down to the Waterfront and spending several hours in a very nice mall to stay out of the rain. Debra was happy. Thom, not so much.

We're looking forward to going back in February when it should be hot and steamy.

Time to Build an Ark

2007-10-02T11:33:00.000+02:00

They say it's a good sign when the rains come before Botswana Independence Day (September 30). Well, the rain came Thursday, September 28. According to some reports, we had more rain that afternoon than all of last year.

Since Thursday, we've had showers every day. Today, we're having quite a lot of rain. This is a pretty big deal. Botswana is a desert country. The currency in Botswana is the "pula". The word for rain in Setswana is "pula". See the connection?

However, some of us, accustomed to the bright sunny days with endless blue skies, are starting to feel a little depressed. Will the sun ever shine again????

This is what the Thursday afternoon storm looked like from our patio (after it got light enough to take a picture):

Trouble in Paradise

2007-09-16T12:56:00.000+02:00

Our friend the Weaver Bird from our last blog entry built what we thought was a lovely nest but the Girl Weaver Bird did not approve.

While eating breakfast on the patio yesterday, we watched the Girl Weaver Bird totally tear apart the nest that the Boy Weaver Bird spent the past couple of weeks building. It would have made a fabulous picture story but we have realized that we just don't have the patience for photographing birds. It was quite entertaining.

This is what is left of the nest today:

For those of you who would like to see good pictures of weaver birds, check out Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Masked-Weaver

And here's a link to a video on YouTube that shows a weaver nest being built:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO12M_FP3L4&mode=related&search=

Spring in Botswana!

2007-09-02T12:11:00.001+02:00

And so finally, after a long, cold winter, spring has come to Botswana. For most of our readership which is in the northern hemisphere we should remind you that Botswana is in the southern hemisphere so our seasons are opposite of those in the northeren hemisphere. Also on most days in the winter the temperature will get into the 70's (Farenheit) during the day and will be in the 40's over night.

So without further explanation. Here are some signs of spring....

Flowers are blooming...

This strange orange flower (above) started blooming a few days ago.

Even stranger orange flowers (above and below). We have no idea what these are.

Lizards are back...where do they go when it's cold????

And here's a Weaver Bird that is tearing apart this plant The bird is dead center in the picture ripping strips off the palm frond.

And weaving a nest in this tree. (the nest is in the center of the tree hanging from the branch)

Temps are hitting the 90s during the afternoon but falling into the 50s at night. Last week we were still hitting the 40s at night so we're definitely on a warming trend. We even had rain one day last week.

We couldn't figure out what the noise was and had to go outside and experience this weird water falling from the sky.
It's a lovely time of year.

A Trip to Gumare

2007-08-06T06:01:00.001+02:00

A few weeks ago Thom had the opportunity to visit hospitals outside Gaborone in the North-Western part of Botswana. The purpose of the visit was to assess IT infrastructure and lab processes to determine readiness to install Lab Information systems at the hospitals. Anyhow, the journey was a lot more exciting than the work.

The trip started at the Gaborone "International" airport. At about 7:30 the pilot found us and escorted us outside to the plane. He had already loaded most of the medical supplies but we helped him carry out a few more things. The interior of the plane was not quite as "posh" as Thom expected. There is a bench on the left hand side that has seat belts for 4. The rest of the seats are put in where ever they fit.
We flew for about an hour and a half and landed at Ghantzi (pronounced 'hanzi') dropped of a passenger and then were off again about 10 minuites later. 45 minutes later we were landing at Gumare. The fact that there was animal dung all over the runway was a little diconcerting. The plane landed on the very small runway and taxied over to the "terminal" pictured below.
Because the hospital had only sent a pickup truck to meet the airplane, the entire lab assessment team could not ride together at the same time to the hospital. So Thom and one other team member stayed at the airport and waited for the second truck to arrive. During that time Thom watched the departure of the plane as it took off for it's next stop in Maun.
Once all the staff made it to the hospital the team met with the hospital Matron and then toured the labs. Sadly, Thom screwed up the coolest picture of the day. In one of the labs a large "Coke" cooler is used to store laboratory stock and samples. The really amazing thing is that the log of tempartures showed it was the most consistent of all the refrigeration equipment at the hospital.

Thom made up for screwing up the shot of the cooler by catching this shot of a chicken walking through the hospital. After the hospital visit we had some time to kill until the plane returned to pick us up. So we walked to the nearest "restaurant". The restaurant menu was goat with papa, goat with sorghum, or goat with rice because only the goat was ready when we got there (usually they have a 2nd meat choice as well). The team tried all three selections. It was pretty good and at a price of $1.50 you aren't going to hear to many people complaining. Below is Thom's lunch....
Once we finished lunch we had tea with the Matron and then headed back to the airport. Below are some random shots as we drove through Gumare on the way back to the airport.

A Reminder that This Is Africa

2007-07-22T07:52:00.000+02:00

We are the first to admit that we have a pretty easy life here and sometimes it is difficult to remember that we live in Africa. But life here is not without its hardships. For example, yesterday...

Until a few weeks ago, we had been planning to leave the country for July 21 so that we would be able to buy the final Harry Potter book on the day it was released. We had even considered a short jaunt to London but had also more realistically thought we might just run down to Johannesburg to pick up the book. Then a few weeks ago the bookstore at Riverwalk mall assured us that they would have the books on July 21 and was a planning a big launch party for the event. The previous books in the series arrived in Botswana a couple of weeks after they were released elsewhere so this indeed was good news. Happy to support the local economy and, more importantly, pleased with the convenience of buying the books locally we pre-paid for our copies of the book and anxiously awaited the launch date.

The week leading up to July 21 we checked back at the book store and learned that the books would go on sale at 9:00 am Saturday morning (unlike most places around the world that started selling the books at 12:01 am the morning of July 21). Although it would have been fabulous to gloat about getting the book six hours earlier than Debra's little brother, we managed to work through this minor disappointment.

Our plan was to pick up the books at 9:00 am and then take a friend to pick up her truck in Zeerust, South Africa where the mechanic who had repaired it after it broke down a couple of weeks ago was bringing it. We planned to read the book as we made the trip.

At 9:15 am we were at the mall, there was no line which seemed suspicious, but we pressed on. We reached the book store and were informed that the books were held up in customs at the border and should be at the store by 10 or 11 that morning.

This disappointment was a little harder to deal with but our plans to drive to Zeerust were delayed as well so the plan was revised to stop at the mall as we drove out of town to pick up the books on the way to Zeerust. Still a good plan.

At 11:30, our friend was delayed a bit, so we went back to the mall, where now there was a crowd and very loud music (which did not seem to be related to the book launch (in fact, in some other blog we will discuss the Saturday activities at the mall)) and all kinds of people waiting in line. A friend from work was waiting in line with his daughter and they informed us that the books had not yet arrived but they were expected at any moment so they were planning to wait it out.

Unfortunately we could not wait since we had a truck waiting to be picked up in Zeerust so we met our friend, and drove to Zeerust without a new Harry Potter book to read.

Zeerust is about an hour and a half drive from Gaborone (including the border crossing) and is just a small town where you "turn left" to go on to Johannesburg/Pretoria. Thom was excited because they had a Steers in Zeerust which is about as close as you are going to get to Burger King on this continent and so he forced Debra to eat there.

We had a pleasant and uneventful drive, met the mechanic with the truck, had some lunch and headed back to Gaborone. When we returned to town, we stopped at the mall once again and finally picked up our copies of the book at 3:45 pm. Other folks also picking up their books at the time, were threatening all kinds of pain and suffering to the courier but all were supportive of the book store itself. We were just happy to get our books.

And so we hope that all of you who picked up your books at Barnes and Noble and Borders or had them delivered to your door from Amazon appreciate the efficiency of that process. We have learned not to take such things for granted.

In case you were wondering, we bought two books because neither of us was willing to wait for the other to read the book first. And we got one of each book cover (the adult and child covers)

We now have some reading to do...

Debswana - Part 2, the Zepplin

2007-07-02T06:37:00.000+02:00

Earlier in this BLOG we talked about Thom's trip to the Jaweng diamond mine. Well, we actually saved the best for last. After the visit to the diamond mine and going to lunch there was a brief stop at the airport in Jwaneng to visit the Debswana Zepplin. That's right! It's a zepplin not a blimp.

At first Thom was a bit under-whelmed because we were stading several hundred yards away as you see in the picture to the right. Well after finally wrangling with the trying to find someone from the ground crew we were told that we could walk over to the zepplin.

The zepplin is being leased to conduct geological surveys looking for additional diamond (and other geological) deposits. And while the technology is a trade secret it pretty much has to do with directing energy into the ground and then reading reflections of the energy. They also have a lot of problems using it during the summer because it is so hot and the altitude is so high. It was Thom's understanding that during the summer months they can only use it at night.

Thom with Zepplin in background

What you can't see in the picture is the entire time the zepplin is mored there is a pilot in the cab making sure that nothing crazy happens because of the winds.

This is the mooring vehicle. Not only is this what reels the zepplin in and keeps it moored, it also adjusts the amount of helium in the zepplin. Because during the day the helium heats up and expands som of the helium must be removed so that the zepplin doesn't "pop".

Remember we pointed out that there is a pilot on board all the time. Well this is why. A huge wind whipped up from behind and lifted the tail of the zepplin almost straight up. So it was up to the pilot to ride it out and make sure that the zepplin returned back down without anything getting broken.

Brrrrrrr!

2007-06-16T10:42:00.000+02:00

We now know why winter is low season for safaris in this part of Africa. It turns out that it can get very cold in Africa and driving around in an open air vehice across the plains at 7:00 in the morning or 7:00 at night can be down right painful.

At the end of May, Thom's mother (Kathie) and her friend (Vickie) visited from upstate New York (see photo above). Notice how bright and sunny and warm it looks.

The day after they arrived, we took them to Madikwe Game Park for a real African safari experience and very nearly got frost bite. Even the visitors from New York (where it is winter in the middle of May as well) were uncomfortably cold as you can see from the photo below.

We did manage to see some really good game on the trip. We saw elephants out wandering around, we saw a lot of rhinos (groups of 6 or more), and we even saw some wild dogs. The park had exchanged 3 dogs to help with the breeding pool since the pack is so small. The dogs were being kept in an enclosure until they could be released to join the Madikwe pack and we were able to get a really good look at them (photo below).
But our most remarkable experience on this safari was seeing a leopard very close and personal. On our first game drive Sunday evening, just after sundown there was a report that a leopard had been "spotted" close to the fence. And we found the leopard hanging out by the fence pacing up and down alongside the road that runs next to the fence. We parked and the leopard continued pacing about, at times only a couple meters away from where we were in the open truck. We spent about 15-20 minutes in very close proximity to the leopard before we had to give our spot to another group (in Madikwe only 3 vehicles are allowed to be close to an animal at any one time).

The explanation of the cat's behavior (other than just being a cat) is that it jumps the fence to hunt cattle on the Botswana side and then after it's nice steak dinner jumps back across the fence where the farmers can't shoot it. Pretty clever for a cat, don't you think?

A few other highlights:

Tau Lodge at sunrise


Vickie and Kathie learn about rhino poo

The Great Train Adventure

2007-06-10T15:38:00.000+02:00

We now depart from our regular posts to talk about something truly fabulous. Friday, June 1 we left Gaborone on the 7:00 am flight to Johannesburg, we then transferred to the domestic airport and caught a flight to Cape Town where we were met by a driver with our names on a sign (Debra loves getting met with her name on a sign!). Our driver took us to the Victoria and Albert Hotel on the waterfront.

We had a lovely afternoon walking around the waterfront, shopping and snacking. Our one disappointment was trying to get a sandwich from Subway. Looked just like a Subway sandwich shop but the sandwiches just weren't right. It was sad. The rest of our time in Cape Town was great and we plan to go back in the not so distant future to explore the city more fully. This trip we didn't have much time because Saturday just after breakfast we were taken to the train station. As soon as the car stopped we were met by Rovos Rail staff who took our baggage and checked us in and gave us drinks and thus, began a most fabulous adventure.

We waited for about an hour in a very comfortable lounge waiting for the rest of the passengers to assemble. It turns out there were 27 passengers total on the train which meant no lines, no crowds, lots of special attention, etc. We were escorted to the train and shown to our suite (The Tsesebe -- named after some sort of a deer like animal (dla)).

Shortly after boarding, the train pulled out of the Cape Town station and we were on our way. The next 48 hours were truly fantastic. The Rovos Rail is an unquestionable first class experience. (We must take a minute to correct a misunderstanding. Before the trip, we thought Rovos Rail and the Blue Train were one and the same. It turns out that is not the case. The Blue Train is run by the government. Rovos Rail is privately operated). So Rovos Rail is described as the "most luxurious train in the world". We haven't taken enough trains to personally endorse this description but we can say we had an incredible experience. The food was really good and served quite interestingly (4 and 5 course meals for lunch and dinner). The service was unbelievable. Every time we left our room, the hostess came in and straightened up everything. In the lounge car and observation car the staff made sure we had constant snacks and beverages. The train experience itself was an amazing blend of history and modern comforts. All the train cars are really, really old and fully restored and the wood paneling and detailing is very nice. You kind of get the feeling that you might be traveling through Africa in the 1930s.

Our journey took us from Cape Town to Pretoria. We had an hour stop in Majtsfontein Saturday evening. Supposedly it's a preserved Victorian Village. They have a creepy museum that even goes down into a basement area that used to be a jail. Frankly "the village" just wasn't very interesting. Maybe in daylight it's nicer.

Sunday we stopped in Kimberley for an excursion. Kimberley has an old diamond mine known as "The Big Hole". It's quite interesting from an historical perspective. Kimberley is where diamond mining began in southern Africa in the late 1800s. Also, this is where DeBeers came to be. According to our tour guide, it is the largest man-made mine (200 some meters deep -- all by shovels and some dynamite). Thom was hugely disppointed. He thought it was supposed to be the biggest hole. And it's clearly not that at all. The total production from the Big Hole was about 14.5 million carats. Annual production from Jwaneng (previously described in this blog) is 12 million carats. All mining activity is finished in the area but DeBeers still has offices in the town. The mine is now purely a tourist attraction.

So back on the train as we left Kimberley, we came across scads and scads of flamingos hanging out in a little lake that is actually filled from water from the Big Hole. It was a spectacular sight -- very pink.

Monday morning was another highlight of the trip. We stopped a little ways outside of Pretoria and switched engines. The ordinary electric engines pulled away, and we hooked up to a very cool steam locomotive.

And so we finished the rest of our journey being pulled by the steam engine. A perfect ending to a most fantastic experience. For those of you with lots of extra time, more photos of this experience can be viewed by clicking here

The Commute

2007-06-05T06:02:00.000+02:00

We have an extraordinarily easy commute to work. Most days we walk to work like this...

(leaving our gate)

(down the sidewalk in front of our house)

(cross the empty lot next to the child care center)

(and then cross the street and we're at work)

One day this showed up smack in the middle of our commute...

(It's a driving school!)

Fortunately for us, it's not a very successful business and has not slowed our commute at all.

Debswana -Part 1, The Diamond mine

2007-05-18T19:38:00.000+02:00

About a month after Thom moved to Botswana he had the opportunity to go to the Jwaneng diamond mine. The Diamond mine is the largest diamond mine in the world by production. It is truly awesome. Whe we first arrived at the mine we were given a briefing from the mine manager (because Thom was taking the tour with the American Deputy Chief of Mission, essentially the vice-embassador, there was some VIP treatment going on). During the course of the manager's talk he pointed out that it was unfortunate that we were there on Tuesday because Wednesday was free sample day. Maybe next time....

Rather than try to narrate the trip we thought it would be easier to post some pictures and then describe the pictures. A lot of these pictures don't really need much description as there main goal is to emphasize how big everything is. So here we go....

These first two shots are included to try to give a scope to the size of the mine. At the top of the mine it is roughly 2.5 km by 1.5 km across. The other thing that can kind of be seen in the pictures is the 2 different kinds of soil/rock The diamonds are located in the kimberlite which is the very gray rock.

This next shot is of Thom taken in the dispatcher's control room. The control room is positioned on a tower right on the edge of the mine and the dispatcher can see everything in the pit. The dispatcher is in constant communication with all of the vehicles in the pit and has a computer that is displaying all of the metrics on each vehicle including weight, speed, location, blah, blah, blah.

The next picture is taken from outside the dispatcher's office on the tower. It's another great shot of the mine and specifically you should notice all of the vehicles that are grouped together on the left hand side. That was the active part of the mine for the day. A truck is being filled up about once every minute.

We started heading over to the active part of the mine and passed a fully loaded truck (below). Notice above the front wheel there is a LED display. That display shows how many Metric Tonnes of rock are in the truck. Another interesting bit of trivia is that everytime a truck heads up the hill it has on average 300 carrats of diamonds in it.

In the picture below, the trucks are getting loaded by this massive "steam" shovel. This is an awesome sight and incredibly loud. Every scoop of rock that the shovel dropped into the truck was about 45 tonnes. It was kind of scary just standing that close. The other cool thing to note is that the shovel is electric.

The next picture is included to show the scale of the operation and the size of the trucks. The wheels of the truck are about 9 feet in diameter. and the trucks are about 25 feet high. In the center of the picture you can see the full size bus we were riding around in.

Below is the primary rock crusher. It's job is to crush all stone so that there is no stone more than15 cm in diameter. It's pretty darn effective. We've also included a shot of a truck dumping rocks into the crusher and the mess it makes.

After the rocks are crushed they are loaded onto this conveyer system and then taken up the hill for the rest of the processing. We weren't allowed to see that mostly for security reasons.

So that's pretty much the adventure of the world's biggest producing diamond mine. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I will have a few more photos to share of the Kimberly mine in South Africa which is the largest man made whole in the ground.

Our Love Hate Relationship

2007-05-09T06:38:00.000+02:00

Some days are just hard and we call those the "I-Hate-Botswana" days. For example, at the end of February, Debra's laptop stopped working and a day later, Thom's computer stopped working. Debra's laptop was still under warranty and had to be sent back to the US as the country of purchase. We can only hope we will see it again.

Thom's computer though needed to be replaced. Purchasing a new Dell was reasonably painless. But transferring the data from the old computer to the new computer turned out to be one of our worst I-Hate-Botswana days. We went to a couple of electronics and computer supply stores but none of them had the external hard drive case that Thom needed. One of his IT staff gave him a lead on a store out close to the airport so at lunch one day we headed out to find it.

We found what we thought to be the store but it was basically an internet cafe with a few computer hardware pieces on display in the window. Thom called his contact who assured him that was the correct store. We found the part that Thom needed in one of the window cases and finally asked a woman if she worked there. She explained she was waiting for us to address her since she wasn't sure if we were shopping or waiting for someone else (?).

The rest of the encounter went something like this...
Thom said he wanted to buy an external hard drive case and she said, "We don't have those." Thom said, "What about that one in the window?"
The strange sales clerk said, "Oh you just want the box not an external hard drive?"
Thom said, "Yes, that's why I said hard drive 'case'."

The strange sales clerk managed to find the key to the window case (eventually) and had Thom double/triple confirm that was what he wanted and acknowledge that it was in fact just a "box". Thom also asked to purchase a UPS which she was able to add to our order. Then the difficulties really began.

The hard drive case wouldn't scan. There was no price listed in the window case or on any of the boxes in the window case. The strange sales clerk hunted around for several minutes leaving the store at one time, going to the store next door, going to the back of the shop, calling someone on the phone, but all to no avail. She finally explained that the item was not included on the price list and the manager had instructed her not to sell it until he could confirm the price. She ended by saying, "Perhaps you'll pop back in tomorrow to buy it?"

Thom was already out the door grumbling, "I hate Botswana." Which left Debra to say, "Probably not," to the strange sales clerk as she hurried to catch up with Thom.

But then there are other days that elicit the reaction, "I love this place!". One of our recent I-Love-This-Place days, was right after Easter. Both of us had been sick back and forth for several weeks but then Debra developed a cough that was keeping everybody awake at night and nyquil just wasn't helping at all. We mentioned at lunch with friends one day that what we really needed was cough syrup with codeine in it. And one of our sources of insider information told us to just go to the pharmacy. Usually that sort of stuff can be sold without a prescription around here.

So after a coughing incident at work that made everyone think Debra had developed TB after working in the program for a couple of days, we headed off to the Skylab Pharmacy next to our Braai Place (more about that in a future blog).
We went to the back of the store and Debra told the nice helpful pharmacist, "I need something for this terrible cough." And the phamacist asked, "is it a dry cough?" and then starts laying out stuff on the counter. And then he instructed, "take this pill" and Debra did and then he said "drink 2 caps of this" and she did and then he told her "chew this" and she did (right there at the counter in the pharmacy). We ended up with a week supply of cipro, a bottle of cough syrup with codeine, and too many chewable vitamin C tablets and a promise that Debra would start filling better in 4 hours. It actually took about 24 hours but Debra did finally stop coughing. Oh, and our total bill at the pharmacy -- about $12!! We love this place!

A Walk in the Park

2007-05-02T05:46:00.000+02:00

First we must apologize because there are no pictures to accompany this post. Yesterday just didn't seem like the sort of day that would need a camera. But the story is too fabulous not to share.

May 1 is a holiday in Botswana -- Labor Day. Because we had the day off, we booked a walking tour at Mokolodi (the game park 15 minutes outside of town, see previous posts for more). We arrrived at 10:00 am for our tour (as booked several days before) and were told that we couldn't have a booking at 10:00 because the walks were done at 7:30 and 4:00. We sorted that out and finally set off with our guide to experience Mokolodi on foot.

Our guide explained that most likely we would not see many animals because they come out in the early morning and late afternoon but we didn't mind about that. We really just wanted to be out in the fabulous fall weather walking around seeing the park from a different perspective. The guide seemed to want to make up for the lack of animals by pointing out all the different plants and quizzing us relentlessly about them but otherwise it was a lovely walk.

We started out by the Animal Sanctuary which neither of us had paid attention to before. They keep injured animals there and then release them back into the park when they are well again. Some of the animals are never well enough to leave the sanctuary. There is a pair of grey fluffy vultures there that are absolutely hilarious. They can't fly so they'll never leave the sanctuary. One of the them followed us around as we walked the perimeter of the fence. It was just weird. We'll get a picture of him the next time we're out there.

Then we walked along examining animal foot prints and poo and saw a couple of wart hogs. We stopped to drink some cokes that the guide had brought along and then we rounded a corner and came up on a giraffe. Yep it was quite a moment. He was standing there having a snack off the top of a tree and we just stood there about 15 meters away. It was such a totally different perspective and feeling just walking up on a giraffe without any fences or cars or any barriers. It was so, for lack of a better word, natural. We could have stayed there all day checking him out but our guide started getting bored so we headed off.

As we walked back to the park entrance we came up on the one thing that Thom wanted to see. That's right, ostriches. Thom had recently seen the "Dirty Jobs" episode about the ostrich farm and was ready to wrangle ostriches. Well it turns out that undomesticated ostriches aren't really into being wrangled. From ground level they are really big (and goofy).

So that was it. We headed home and the rest of the day was just as fabulous.

Victoria Falls - Part2: WOW

2007-04-09T14:10:00.000+02:00

In our last episode about Victoria Falls we talked about getting to Livingstone, Zambia. Today we talk about how cool it was once we got there.

The lodge where Keith and Thom were meeting up with Carmen and Jason at was called the Tongabezi. It was quite spectacular to say the least. The accomodations were awesome and the service was great. Keith and Thom ended up arriving at about 2:00 that afternoon and checked in. They were then shown to there cottage called the treehouse. It's called that because it is built around a tree and absorbs the tree into the architecture. It was really amazing. The next couple of pictures show some interesting pictures of the cabin.

This picture captures how the tree is key to the architecture. It holds up the roof and also the bed netting. The back of the cabin is the rock of the river bank and the front is open, overlooking the river.

The bath, shower and sinks were located on the level below the bed and the main deck. The tub is made out of molded concrete. As you can see this whole area is also open facing the river.

This picture was taken at about 6:30 in the evening. Keith and Thom were still waiting on Carmen and Jason to arrive (They were on African time). This is from the deck in front of the sleeping area.

So Carmen and Jason finally arrived and much food and wine was shared through the evening catching up on what everybody had been doing lately. About 10:00 we went to bed because we had a big day ahead of us.

So we woke up the next morning and had a great breakfast (all the food here was amazing). Carmen, Jason, and Keith ran out to see a small game park located close by in the morning. At about 11:00 we all piled in the truck and headed for Livingstone Island. To get there we actually had to go to the Royal Livingstones and then take a boat out to the island. The thing that makes this island so cool is that it's located right in the center of the falls. As you can see from the next couple of pictures we were right at the edge of the falls. It still blows my mind to think about walking through the water getting to the different places just a couple of meters from the edge. There were no safety rails or ropes. You would just never experience anything like this in the U.S.

This monument was laid in 2005 to commemorate the 150 year anniversary of Livingstone discovering the falls. Not that he actually discovered it but he gave the falls some great PR. The falls in the background are the Zambia side of the falls. Because it was high season the was a lot of water on this sise.

This is on the other side of the island. We walked along the edge of the falls the entire way. There were several times when we had to walk through rushing water just a few feet from the edge of the falls. The Zimbabwe side of the falls is in the background of this picture. There was a lot more mist on this side which made it difficult to get many more pictures. During low season there is a pool you can swim in just behind where we are standing that comes right up to the edge of the falls.

So after our trip to Livingstone Island we decided to go and see the falls from the viewing side. They actually charged to go into the park. Having grown up near Niagara Falls Thom found this is a bit weird, but what the heck. We actually went over to the Sun and asked if we could enter their. The guard gave us a fake room number and told us to give him $20 when we came back. It was about half the cost so we said OK if we had gone to the correct place to get in. So we got into the park.

This is from the second viewing area. The falls go on for probably another 3/4 of a mile beyond this. This is the last viewing area where we were dry.

As we were heading down to the viewing area we went by a concession renting rain coats for about a dollar (Carmen and Jason had brought there own). Thom being the cheap bastard that he is said "I don't need no stinking rain coat." Well as it turns out, Thom needed a rain coat. The mist was unbelievable. It was everywhere.

As you can see there is no staying dry. There was so much mist in this area and the rest of the way that most of the time you could only hear the falls.

To see all the pictures that Thom managed to take at the falls click here.

That night we went back to the falls to see the "Lunar Rainbow". It was really cool but impossible to photograph. Ok, at least not possible with my little Powershot. But it was none the less very cool. The "rainbow" did not have all the colors of the spectrum!

So that's the story of Vic falls.

Grocery shopping in Gabs

2007-03-31T18:46:00.000+02:00

Today we take a break from our Victoria falls adventure to talk about the mundane. Life in Botswana is not all about exotic adventures. But sometimes every day life can be an adventure.

So today we will talk about the Gaborone Scavenger Hunt, or what we know as grocery shopping.

Here in Gaborone we have some very nice grocery stores. But things can be a little different in unexpected ways. This happens to be a real sign in one of our favorite stores (picture to the left). In fact, we make a point to bring people to this store so we can show off this sign. It's not really a big deal because there is a pretty good restaurant, Cafe Dulce, on the second floor that overlooks the grocery store. Thom happens to be the third person from CDC to photograph this signto share with friends (that we know of).

Another difference in our Gaborone grocery stores is that it is very difficult to find plain, salted potato chips but every other flavor imagineable is fully stocked (see picture to the right) including Fruit Chutney, Biltong, Chicken and Thyme...

Selection of other items is not as extensive as we are accustomed to... the cereal aisle at the stores here turns out to be more of a "shelf", or an amazing selection of corn flakes (picture on left).

And things are not always grouped the way we are expecting to see them. For example, as best we can determine, there is a"stuff that comes in cans" aisle that includes canned green beans, canned mushrooms, canned tuna, canned spaghetti, and canned chakalaka.

There are also no guarantees that there will be a steady supply of anything. Recently we have had shortages of coke light (diet coke), streaky bacon (the bacon most similar to what we eat in America), cream cheese, and Debra's favorite milk. To be clear on what makes a milk Debra's favorite:

- It can't be from the dairy case because the concept of keeping milk refrigerated from the time it leaves the cow until the time it is drunk is more of a guideline than a rule here. That leaves the UHT (Ultra Pastuerized, Long life, stored in the pantry) milk.

- It must be fat free.

- It must have a screw top, not a flip lid. Not clear why, but it must.

So today in the store they actually had milk that met these stringent criteria. See the almost empty bottom shelf in the center of picture to the right.

In light of these random shortages we have learned that it is much less frustrating to go to the grocery and see what they have before deciding on a dinner menu instead of planning the menu and then trying to find all the ingredients. For example, at New Years, Thom wanted to make stuffed cabbage and decided that if the store had sauerkraut, then it would be feasible. The store actually had 4 cans of sauerkraut so we bought them all and then proceeded to gather up the rest of the ingredients. All went well until we stopped at the produce section on the way to check out and discovered they had no cabbage. We did find cabbage at one of the 3 other stores we stopped at next but it was a bit traumatizing. All in all, grocery shopping is quite manageable. We now know the best times for shopping to avoid the crowds, and which stores have the best bread, and that creamed cottage cheese really isn't the same thing as cream cheese even if it does come in the same package as the philadelphia cream cheese.

Things we do like about grocery shopping in Gaborone:

1. There is the equivalent of hamburger/Chicken/Tuna helper here called Mince Mate/ Chicken Mate/ Tuna Mate. They are even much lower in sodium than their American counterparts.

2. The cookie aisle has become a favorite. Cookies here are called "biscuits". Biscuits are called scones. They're not as sweet. They're not as expensive. And it's a lot of fun trying them.

3. The sausage lady. This is like going to Costco!!!

Victoria Falls - Part1: Getting there

2007-03-25T15:41:00.000+02:00

Deb and Thom would first like to apologize for the horrible delay in a new post. Recently, both of our computers crashed within 24 hours due to completely unrelated things and it has taken us a while to recover.

As we resume our blogging we would like to start the story of Thom's Victoria Falls adventures...

Half the adventure of the excursions you can take in Africa is the journey itself. Nothing is ever easy or direct. For example, before Deb arrived in Botswana, Thom and Deb's friend Keith was in town and Thom and Keith decided they wanted to meet our friends Carmen and Jason Villar who now live in Zambia. After much debate it was agreed that we would all meet in Livingstone, Zambia to see Victoria Falls. Because Carmen and Jason live so close (about a 4 hour drive) they end up going there a lot with visitors.

Anyhow, to get to Victoria Falls from Gaborone is not a 4 hour car drive but rather a little bit more complicated and reminiscent of the Steve Martin movie, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles". So we left work at about 10:00 AM to catch an 11:00 flight to Kasane in the north part of Botswana. Note that we made it to the airport with about 25 minutes before departure and we were some of the first there for that flight. While waiting in the departure lounge, Thom ran into 2 people he knew from Gaborone. It's a small town. The plane took off on time and we landed in Kasane a little after noon.

So Keith and Thom went outside the airport and realized they really had no idea what company was picking them up to provide transportation. Apparently this is quite common because there were a lot of confused people standing there and a lot of confused drivers coming up to different groups asking, "are you the So and So's" or "are you staying at the umpty squanch lodge?" In all this confusion one gentleman asked Keith, "Are you the Villas?" and Keith replied, "No we aren't staying at the Villas, we're going to the Tongabezzi Lodge." Thom jumped in and said "do you mean the Villars?" because Carmen had made the booking. The driver, whose name by the way was Sparks, said "Yes, the Villas." After he showed Thom and Keith the booking and it was determined that yes indeed it was the Villars we were on our way.

So we got in the truck (pictured to the left). Thom was a little concerned that they were going to ride for an hour in this vehicle. It turned out that really wasn't an issue but it was windy as they drove along in the back of this truck. The truck drove through Kasane as it headed to the Zambezzi river and had to slow down to almost a complete stop. The reason for the slow down was a mess of live stock in the road (Ok it wasn't a mess but it would have been if we didn't slow down). Pictured on the right were some cows that would not get out of the way. This is not unusual for driving in Botswana.

After leaving Kasane we headed towards the river and the border crossing. About a mile before the border we encountered a line of trucks. Sadly Thom didn't realize at the time what this meant and didn't get a picture. You see, the line of trucks were waiting to cross the border. They line up and wait, and wait, and wait. Our driver told us that the truck at the end of the line will probably be there for 3 to 4 days before he crosses the river. Mostly the backup is due to only 1 truck getting on the ferry at a time and cars get priority on the ferry. If both ferries are working there are 4 crossings an hour. Most of the time only 1 ferry is operational. Above on the left is a picture of a truck crossing on the ferry heading to Botswana from Zambia.

Thom was worried that waiting for the ferry was going to take for ever. It turns out those fears were unfounded because once we went through immigration in Botswana we were taken down to the river where a private boat was waiting for us. Keith and Thom quickly grabbed their bags and jumped onto the boat. The driver even rode across the river with us to make sure we were passed off to the next vehicle on the other side. The whole boat ride took about 10 minutes.

When we got to the Zambia side we were met by another transport company who had brought 20 tourists to the border earlier that morning. So we got to ride toward Livingstone in the luxury bus that they had traveled in. It was a little bit more comfortable than the truck that had picked us up at the airport. The expediter took Keith and Thom through Customd and Immigration which was amusing because the woman processing Thom's diplomatic passport thought it was a big deal. Thom being the fool that he is tried to down play it which made her think that there was something suspicious about Thom. Editor's note: Thom learned his lesson about too much modesty and will not repeat that again. 2nd Editor's note: there usually is something suspicious about Thom.

From there the drive to the Tongabezzi lodge took about 30 minutes.

In next week's exciting blog we will continue the adventure at Victoria Falls.

The Hilarious Elephants at Mokolodi

2007-03-05T06:40:00.001+02:00

After our cheetah experience at Mokolodi, we thought we were pretty much done for the day and were heading out of the park when we noticed an elephant walking toward us. Our ranger stopped the truck while 4 elephants came in to the clearing just next to the road. These elephants were with their handlers who teach them commands in Urdu and Hindi. They have one male elephant and 3 females. So we sat there right next to these giants and watched them for about 20 minutes. You should know that elephants that close smell really bad. And elephant poop has a worse smell than you would think.

One of the females came right beside our truck and starting eating the plant stuff growing very low to the ground. The male turned around to see what she was doing and used his trunk to pull the stuff right out of her mouth (see picture on right). Evidently, he decided that was kind of tasty so he started working on pulling up some of the stuff himself.

Now this stuff is so low to the ground that it's out of their line of sight and it's rooted very tightly in the ground. They wrapped their trunks around it and then used their feet to help get it out of the ground (see photos below). The male got a nice big serving and the female pulled it out of his mouth with her trunk. When the male's trunk started "nosing" around her mouth she pulled the plants out of her mouth with her trunk and held it away until he went to back to uprooting more of the stuff for himself. We were highly entertained for several minutes by this interaction.

As an editorial aside, we were quite impressed by how agile the elephants were. They're huge but they can do some very delicate work. Kristen and Debra also found out why elephants have 4 feet (It's a joke that was demonstrated by the male elephant while we were there).

After the elephants decided they were done entertaining us, we finished our Mokolodi adventure and headed home.

The Cheetahs

2007-03-01T20:06:00.000+02:00

While Kristen was still in town we all went to participate in Thom's favorite entertainment for vistitors.... "The Cheetah Experience." About 15 Km (or 15 clicks) outside of Gaborone there is a little game park called Mokolodi Game Resereve. The game park has no predators except the indiginous leopards and the 2 cheetahs that are in their own 10 hectare(we have no idea how big that is) enclosure. These 2 male cheetahs were rescued as cubs when their mother was shot by a farmer. Supposedly these cheetahs are very accustomed to being around people and don't know how to hunt at all.

The trip started as most trips to Mokolodi, or anywhere in Botswana, usually do, the booking (reservation) was all messed up. After sorting out the booking so that we could actually do the cheetah experience we were on our way. Within 45 seconds of starting the game drive we saw this really cool bird. It's some sort of hornbill but we never really pay attention to the names of birds. Somebody just made up those names anyhow. Our guide showed us the indiginous things that are normal: Impala, Kudo, Warthog, blah blah blah. But we were dying to see the CHEETAHS.

Thom's impatience was momentarily abated when we went a different way and approached the watering hole from the north instead of the south as is normal. By doing this we came right up on the hippos. Not that they ever do a lot but you could actually see them in the water this time. They were very cool. We're pretty sure they even noticed us.

We came across some Heart-a-beasts and saw them from an angle where we could really understand where they got their name (it's a deer like thing whose antlers kind of make a shape of heart in case you care) and then we were finally off to the cheetah enclosure.

When we got there our guide jumped out of the truck and got the key that was hidden, as always, under the rock next to the gate. So we drove inside the enclosure and immediately saw one of the 2 cheetahs. This cheetah was easily identified as the son-of-a-bitch that doesn't really like people (he is pictured to the left). We've been told he almost ate one of Clinton's Aides a couple years back but you have to question what his motivation might have been.

Our ranger had us get out of the vehicle to look around a bit for the "cool cheetah". That's when this next picture was taken. As you can see Debra thinks it's a really bad idea to walk around in a cheetah's habitat. She just doesn't get how cool the experience is. He wasn't anywhere close so we got back in the vehicle and drove around until we finally found the cool cheetah. (Pictured to the right is an artist's rendition of the cool cheetah that Debra was expecting)

And by the way, yes, we would love for you to send us cheetos...email for the address if needed.

But back to our story now. We found the cool cheetah and he seemed happy to see us but right then a horse trotted by the enclosure and the cheetah was fascinated by this. He took off and ran a long the fence keeping pace with the horse until he couldn't see the horse anymore (but, of course, these cheetahs have no concept of hunting). Anyhow the cheetah did not return to the same tree to hang out but kind of just took off so we had to get back in the vehicle to go find him again.

We finally found the cheetah all settled down hanging out under a tree.
To the right is what the cheetah actually looks when all relaxed and content like.

Thom and Kristen had a great time petting the cheetah but Debra preferred to keep her distance. She doesn't like cats. The picture below was captured during one of the brief moments when Debra wasn't screaming, "We're all going to die!!!!!" Fortunately no one got eaten (this time) and we got back in the vehicle to drive around and see more of the game park.

In our next edition we'll talk about the hilarious elephants at Mokolodi.

To see more pictures from Mokolodi, visit Kristen's pictures on Shutterfly

Kristen visits and the trip to Tau

2007-02-27T16:32:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the life and times of Thom and Debra. In the next couple weeks we'll be updating some of things that have happened in the last 5 months since Thom arrived in Gaborone. Since Thom's sister Kristen just left we'll talk about some of the adventures we had with her this past week (On or about Feb 24, 2007).

Kristen arrived on Wednesday. As soon as we were in the car heading in to the city she started commenting on how the airport and the roads did not feel like a developing third world country. On Thursday, Thom took Kristen shopping at Riverwalk, one of the "malls" in town. Upon entering the grocery her immediate comment was that "this is bigger than any grocery store in Paris."

Friday afternoon we headed off to Madikwe Game Reserve just over the boarder in South Africa. We arrived at Tau Game Lodge (http://www.taugamelodge.co.za/) in time for lunch and then before we even got settled in our rooms, the elephants came to the watering hole.

Our rooms were at the end of the watering hole where about 25 elephants spent 30-45 minutes playing in the water and taking their afternoon mud baths. So we sat out on our patios and were entertained by the show.

Around 4:00 we met for tea on the lodge deck and then set off with our Ranger, Cornell, and a British family who is also living in Gaborone for our evening game drive. We saw a lot of impala, some rhinos, and an old giraffe. We spent some time parked next to 3 8-month old lion cubs (photos). Their mother doesn't hang with the rest of the pride, so leaves the 3 cubs in a safe place while she hunts and drags the kill back to the cubs. She works really hard but what is truly amazing is that the cubs stay where she leaves them!!! (In the picture to the right->>You have to look in the grass in front of the jeep to see the lion cubs)

Saturday morning, our day started with the 5:00 am wake up call from Ranger Cornell. By the time Thom and Debra stumbled unto the lodge deck for coffee, everyone was quite wound up about the racket that the hyenas and zebras were making that morning. So we set off to find out what was going on. And it turned out to be quite a dramatic morning (really too much drama for one hastily downed cup of coffee).

Before the sun even came up, we drove around a corner and came across a pack of 9 hyenas that had the stolen the kill from the mother lion and her cubs. The lions were on one side of the road and the hyenas were on the other (and we were in the road just a very short distance away!!). The mother lion was quite irritated that their breakfast had been taken away but couldn't do much about since she had the cubs with her and there were 9 hyenas!

So the hyenas were taunting the lion while they ate her breakfast and the lion was stalking about on the other side of the road. The kill turned out to be a baby zebra and the mother zebra came around crying and looking for the baby. That almost turned really ugly but she ran off before she got eaten too. A brown hyena (somewhat rare to see apparently) came around to see if he could get some breakfast too but the spotted hyenas weren't in a sharing mood so he got chased off.

Finally the hyenas had enough to eat and dragged the leftovers off with them. The lions came out to see if anything was left but they were sadly disappointed.

If you have some extra time and want to see more Safari pictures from Madikwe Game Reserve and the Tau lodge, click here for Kristen's pictures that she posted on shutterfly