Back in the office...

...after a nice trip to South Africa last week, mainly time off for pleasure. We did a great job timing our first week-off-of-the-year with the arrival of Alan. The week consisted of:

- Hanging out in Joburg with Jéan.

- Hanging out in Pretoria with the P's.

- Fetching Alan from the airport.

- Quickly integrating A. into Africa, and Joburg in particular (where he's starting his new job in about a month).

- Shopping around (a bit) in the greater Pta/JHB area for roof tents and other 4x4 accessories.

- Hitting Pilanesberg for a quick camping trip and some animal-spotting for the new guy.

Apparently A. had never slept in a tent before. Well now he can't say that any more. He also got to enjoy my (Jill) campfire eggs & bacon & onions deluxe. And who wouldn't kill for that opportunity.... really.

We've been to Pilanesberg many times, but this time took the cake as far as babies were concerned. Apparently we hit the peak time for new arrivals in the wild kingdom and every adult animal spotting offered a newborn or two, to boot. So for this blog, I will post a couple photos of not even half of the baby guys that we saw in just 2 short days.

(Oh yes, and A. got to see 3 of the Big 5 in his first expidition out in the NorthWest Province, so he's doing very well for himself. He's also proven to be a natural born spotter... catching quite a few really really really long distance views on hillsides at least a mile away that even J1 and I didn't spot. Although I'd say every single time he made me slam on the breaks, it was zebra. I think he's well and truly got some sort of zebra-magnet hidden somewhere on him)

Baby hippo (look to the right)

Baby ellies

Baby waterbok

We also saw: baby rhino, baby bosbok, baby baboons, baby zebra, and baby giraffe.

Once we got back to Gabs, of course we had to make Alan climb Kgale Hill a couple of times (not to mention the end of vacation means the beginning of fitness for us, too), and we did a lot of showing off Gabz-City and that kind of stuff. We also celebrated his birthday and put him to work (kind of) in the office. By the end of this week, he'll probably be desperate for his new company to come through with all his immigration paperwork (which is why he's here with us for a few weeks), so he can get back to Joburg and start working at a real job where the boss doesn't drag you off to yoga class in the afternoon and make you do work on your so-called "holiday"!!!

Thanks to anyone out there who is holding thumbs for our beloved Reggie. He's doing just fine, we're keeping our eyes peeled and our hopes up high that if he did have a cancer "thing", that it won't be coming back. Surely he has a few more good years left in him. The vet thinks he removed it all so we just have to go with that. Meanwhile, he's still the same old high-maintenence, obnoxious food hound that he's always been, so that's good enough for us! I think he's doing just fine.