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...!

some random pictures

Some pictures of more recent stuff, which happened in the last few weeks:

This was during a night of playing music with friends

J2 during one of her motor cycle lessons

Uncle Alan's car needed some attention, after being parked on our driveway. JJ could not wait to get it going....

J1

rain

It rained really hard this morning, but someone was prepared when going to school......


J1

random places and friends

Some last random pictures of friends and family in the Netherlands, without any further comment. THANKS EVERYONE!

J1

Texel

There are some pictures left from our Netherlands trip, which I will post now. After this there is some much more recent stuff coming, like hiking trips, gardening pictures etc.

Anyway, the last two days of our Netherlands trip we went to a little island just north of the Netherlands called Texel. The little JJ stayed with the grandparents, so it was just us.

waiting for the ferry

Texel at a distance (the ferry ride is only 15 minutes)

Shopping in Den Burg, the main town on Texel

Visiting the old fishing harbour my parents used to take us as kids

A very Dutch picture....

It was very cold, so we had some 'erwtensoep met roggebrood' in the harbour

A nice (but very very cold) run on the beach

and also very windy

reward after our run: a nice masage chair in our hotel

we loved this: Texel is known for their (real) sheep, and they put these artificial sheep on the traffic circle

It was a nice little break before heading back to Botswana, a very nice hotel with sauna, luxery swimming pool and nice restaurants right on the beach, and walking distance into a little village.

J1

Random pictures

We have already been posting much more recent stuff, but I still had some pictures from the Netherlands trip to post on here. These are some random ones:

Winter atire....

enjoying the forest and winter weather

Our favourite restaurant 'de Zeven Wouden'


JJ and her favourite ball, which we found in the house

My old '66 Kreidler motorcycle (partially restored), which we are trying to import to Botswana

J1

U2 concert

this is Jill posting for once -

we went to the biggest concert of our lives this Valentine's weekend - over 100,000 other concert-goers joined us in South Africa's biggest stadium (what was once called "Soccer City" in Soweto, now which is called "FNB Stadium") to watch U2 play their first show in Africa in about 10 years. Here are some photos.

(Below: at dusk, as the stadium starts to fill up)

(Above: friends Greg & Abigail - far left, and Don & Heather - far right, who went with us)

(Below: us just before U2 takes the stage)

(Above: really complicated stage gear, really awesome setup)

(Below: the stage had such massive screens that it didn't matter if you were 568 rows back)

We were blown away by what a spectacular show they put on (we, who are a little bit more used to the old hole-in-the-wall juke joint kinda venue that our favourite blues/rock/non-world-famous bands are more suited to playing in), and also by the fact that we (along with 100,000 others) were serenaded by Bono with "our song" - which happens to be a rather "B-side", obscure U2 song and which we never in a million years would've imagined they would play at a mega-concert! But there we were, in the country where we met almost 11 years ago (when it became "our song") hearing the actual band play the actual tune we had our first dance as husband & wife to on March 2, 2002. It was really special.

Botsalano (J1)

We did a little camping trip to Botsalano game park, just accross the border in South Africa, during one of the last weekends in January. Some nice pictures of this little trip.

JJ inspeacting the camp

Out at the hide looking over the water

is that toddler for dinner?

the famous 'loo with the view'

and this is the actual view, as seen from the toilet

there were loads of animals as usual, such as this nice springbok

or this lone buffalo bull

some nice meals cooked over the fire...

before the fire got a little too big...

J1