Sun City (J1)

Some pictures from our recent visit to Sun City (South Africa)

J1

hiking trip in February (J1)

We have managed to get quite a few (weekend) trips in this year, catching up with some of the pictures: these are from a hiking trip in the Waterberg in February.

crossing the river....

someone could not stay awake for the 20km

beautiful scenery

but watch out for spiders....

almost back

well deserved braai and drinks afterwards.

J1

Belated birthday trip post

J1 has been constantly reminding me I have not contributed any information about our fantastic 5 days away for my (the birthday girl's) birthday - life has been too hectic and I'll admit to being a little too preoccupied with getting my motorcycle license (!!!) to sit still for long enough to do it!

So without further ado...

On the 8th of March, I was begrudgingly forced to attend a site meeting in BW's 2nd biggest town, Maun, for work. Obviously, waking up at 5am to fly on a bumpy puddle jumper for 2 hours and spend the entire day in the sun and 110F/40C degrees in sand up to your knees, surrounded by asphalt and ill-tempered construction workers, only to turn around 10 hours later and fly back home where the day is basically over already, is NOT my idea of a good birthday.

So you can imagine my surprise and elation when just as I was getting ready to check in at the Maun airport around 5pm for my flight home (after a very long, hot, frustrating day), I was met by none other than J1, our friend Petra, and J3.... who pulled up in our own car, out of nowhere, right in front of me!

As it turned out they all 3 hopped in the car in Gaborone about 30 minutes after I left the house for the airport that morning, and drove the 8 hours up north, just to surprise me (Petra just came along for the ride & to help out J1 on the road - we left her with friends and headed off on our merry way after some birthday drinks at the cafe across from the airport, with a few of my collegues who also were "in the know" about the whole plan).

J1 had organized 4 wonderful nights at a combination of two very nice lodges for the 3 of us:

This one, and

This one.

The most magnificent thing about the 2nd lodge is that it is on a cliff overlooking the Boteti River, which hasn't flown for over 20 years - but is now chock full of water. Meaning elephants and hippos right beneath your tent. It made for fantastic game viewing and was really special to be there for this unusual event.

Photos....

My birthday dinner in our chalet at RTL - brought personally to us by the staff to "eat in" rather than having us walk in a super-huge rainstorm to the main lodge dining room. You can see the luxurious (giant) bathtub in the back:

The nice thing about this lodge is that it is on a private game farm with no predators, meaning you can do lots of nice walks amongst the wildlife. We saw giraffe, the elusive black springbok, zebra, eland, oryx, ostrich, etc, etc, etc. All on foot (us) and all very close up:

(above: black springbok - very rare)

Stop No. 2: In the Makgadikgadi Pans, where the Boteti is currently flowing - we had a really posh safari tent overlooking the river.

They blew a hide out of the side of the cliff, so that you could watch the river from a cool rock-room. Here is the entrance:

view from inside the cliff-hide:

We spent a whole afternoon hiding out from the sun inside that cliff... it was hard work.

View from the pool back up on top of the ledge @ camp: Swimming lessons:

Look behind you!

Relaxing in the heat:

Thank you for taking us, Papa...!