Evacuation complete? (J1)

We received an email from the auctioneer who was handling our house sale, before we left Ireland. He asked if we could please get in touch with him. A developer had contacted him, and wanted to buy our house.

The timing was quite good, as we had recently been thinking about maybe trying to put it back on the market. Unfortunately house prices had been dropping over 6% in Ireland in the last year. But the developer really wanted our house, and we ended up agreeing a price higher then our asking price last year.

We have been here before, and I do not want to get too excited about it until contracts have been signed. Our solicitor is currently preparing the contracts, and hopefully we can sign within 4 weeks.

If the sale goes though, we would have officially completed our evacuation from Ireland, as this blog has suggested. I have proposed to J2 to change the name of the blog. Lets wait and see.

J1

Delta and Maun (J1)

A few weeks back we had to go to a place called Gumare. It is located on the west side of the famous Okavango Delta, Botswana's biggest tourism attraction. Unfortunately the west side is more where cattle is held, where as the middle and east side is where all the wildlife is. Our work assignment was to check out a new site for the development of a hospital. We figured, as work brings us up there anyway, we might as well spend the weekend in the famous Delta, relax, and see some wildlife. This was until we started calling around for prices.....Everything is priced in US Dollars, and the cheapest we could find in the Delta area was $750 per person per night! On the top end $2000 per person per night was no exception.

With a salary in Botswana Pula, we had to settle for something outside the Delta, closer to Maun, but still very very nice. Some pictures:

This was at Nguma Island Lodge, close to our work site, on the cattle side of the Okavango Delta. Hippos and crocodiles are still seen regularly here. We did not see them, but did hear them at night.
The accommodation was in luxury tents, complete with bathroom and shower. The whole thing is on poles above the water.

The Delta area, the only place in Botswana that has sufficient water. It made a great place for birdwatching. We had to leave our (rental) car in the nearby village, and were picked up by the lodge to be driving for 30 minutes through areas like in the above picture, just to get to the lodge.
We were the only visitors that night, and had the whole bar to ourselves. We enjoyed a lovely glass of port on the bar.

For our weekend we stayed here, at the Tree Lodge. The picture shows the main entrance. The whole thing was located in a private game farm of 200 ha.

This was our 'cottage', probably one of the nicest places I ever stayed at. The place had a huge bed, big corner bathtub, and outdoor shower!

The gamefarm was free for everyone to walk around, and had some beautiful trails. It had giraffe, kudu, springbok, impala, zebra, eland, warthog etc, just no predators. The picture shows J2 checking out the giraffes.

J1

an update, finally (J1)

I realize it has been nearly a month since the last update. Instead of listing excuses (again), I will try and organise what I would like to share on this blog from the past month:

• Our office move, images of our new place
• Our (work) trip to Maun and the Delta
• Our trip into the bush (Khutse) with A. and E.
• The sale of our house in Ireland
• More surgery for Reggie.

I will try and make a post for all of them this coming week, as we have some nice pictures. I will start with one now, on a saturday afternoon, in the office :(

J1