Beach and Birthday (J1)

After being totally landlocked for the first time since I moved out of Holland, we (finally) spent some time on the coast again. J2 had organised an early birthday break, and we met up with the P. family in Umhlanga, just north of Durban. The weather was very nice, we did some swimming in the ocean, and of course lots of eating and drinking. Some pictures:

Our resort, as seen from our apartment

Jill on the beach

Dinner with the family P.

A little note on the side: This dinner was right before the France - Ireland game (rugby world cup), which explains my shirt. For those who do not follow rugby: Ireland's game has been terribly poor this whole WC, they did not stand a chance against a poor French team, and have now lost all chances of progressing to the quarter finals. My support did not help. I will be supporting the Springboks (South Africa) from here on for this tournament.

Still happy, an early birthday dinner (an before the rugby)

After our lovely few days in Durban, we stopped over for a night of partying in Joburg with Alan and Jean. We had champagne, a really nice dinner in Moyo and of course loads of drinks.

Drinks in Ratz - Melville

I have been overwhelmed by all the presents, wishes, superpokes, cards etc for my 30th. Thanks everyone. And while I write this I am only halfway through the day. Jill bought me a new (Bosch) hammer drill and a really good pair of binoculars. I can not wait to take them into the bush for a test.

Finally a small negative. The picture below is me paying a speeding ticket to a possibly corrupt traffic cop in Groot Marico. I got caught again....He halved the fine on the spot for paying cash though, welcome to Africa.

J1

Lo and Behold, it's here!

The big news from the dark continent today is that our website is officially up and running!

Please check it out and don't forget to let us know of any glaring mis-spellings or appalling grammar.

Big thanks to our friends Jéan and Alan who helped us make it. Definitely couldn't have done it without you guys. We really appreciate it, and appreciate it even more that you were willing to do it for free. Or rather, do it for wine and muesli (respectively).

The next post will be filled with far more excitement, I promise.

In the meantime we're just busy watching the World Cup rugby, Twenty20 cricket World Cup, and working a little bit.

Otherwise, it's getting hot. Really hot. I think Alan is going to melt.

And finally, we 2 Westras are going down to Kwa-Zulu Natal, to Umhlanga beach (Just outside of Durban, SA) for 3 days with the Polson parents at their timeshare next week (19-22 Sept). Our first sight of coastline and anything that resembles a large body of water (The Indian Ocean) in almost a year. For those of you who don't know, SOMEONE is turning the big 3-0 on Monday the 24th and we thought it would be nice to do something fun that weekend. A day in Joburg with Jéan on the way home, and a stop in Rustenburg for sushi before crossing the border back into Botswana on Sunday. Can't wait.

Spring (J1)

This is probably going to be the most cheesy and boring blog so far. But even though Botswana spring is so very dry, everything is flowering beautifully. I went around our garden this weekend and took the following pictures:

Did we already say it was getting hot again?

A little 'log' we hung, which has been inhabited

A beautiful 'native' in full flower.

And the aloes are just gorgeous.

This is taken from our 'lawn' area.

Nice white flowering tree around the pool.

The creeper on the pergola close to the kitchen.

An even our pruned peach tree is showing the first flowers.

This is a little lemon tree we planted a few weeks ago.

And of course our farming.....some carrots and onions

We finished a major deadline last week, so we are slowly catching up with everything else, such as working out, playing tennis, having long lunches etc. Sorry for this boring post.

J1