A Green Christmas

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!

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.