Best Vacation Ever

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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...