For our fellow GA girl and El Diablo…
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
the daily(ish)
I’m guessing this place doesn’t have the actual rights to use UGA’s face…
We are not fooled by the ugly hat.
Monday, May 23, 2011
stellenbosch
As I may have mentioned, the Wife and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this past Friday. Although technically, the actual celebrating didn’t happen until Saturday. Thanks to a new “rule” about leaving on Friday we weren’t able to fly out until 9:30pm. This meant we didn’t get into Cape Town and to our hotel until around 1am. Good times.
We had a leisurely breakfast and made our way out to the wine country on Saturday. We chose to stay again in Klein Zalze so we could have our celebratory dinner at their amazing Terrior restaurant (will post soon on food blog).
After checking in we drove over to Spier Winery to stalk a cheetah. Well, not really stalk as much as pet one at the Cheetah Outreach Center.
What an incredible experience…
His name was Joseph and he was beyond awesome. I’ll admit I was a little weirded-out when we walked into his area. He’s big. He’s a freaking cheetah. Enough said. We had to walk behind him and kneel on one leg. This was so we could get up quickly in case he decided to roll over or get up or try to eat our face off. As soon as I knelt behind him he rose up. I almost peed my pants, but the whole kneeling on one leg thing worked because I was up in lightening speed.
After he walked over to the shade, which was all he wanted, we both knelt behind him and were able to stroke his side. He literally purred. Cheetahs are Africa’s only big cat that purrs. Again, just incredible…
We later found out we had been hanging with a celeb. He was in “King Solomon’s Mine” with Patrick Swayze.
After our cheetah encounter we took a tour of facilities and saw some of their other rescue animals…
Cheetah Outreach is an awesome organization that breeds dogs to save the cheetahs. Yeah, that’s right- they raise money to breed dogs. Actually it’s such a cool program. The cheetahs they have were all born in captivity. They were hand-raised so they can’t be sent back into the wild. They “work” as ambassadors educating young and old about the plight of their wild family members. The money they raise is used to breed some kind of huge Turkish sheep dog that when placed as a pup with livestock protects the herd from predators…
Cheetah outreach breeds the dogs and gives them to farmers with the promise that they will not trap or shoot cheetahs or other predators. Farmers who have the dogs go from losing 1/3 of their livestock to around 2% and best of all- the wild cheetah population is saved from demise. Our guide told us they have been doing it for about 11 years in Botswana and they have actually stabilized their cheetah population and are even seeing some growth. Win. Win. Win.
The rest of our afternoon and really the rest of our weekend was spent tasting wines, buying wines, shopping at the little craft market, talking about the past 5 years and planning the next 20 all while eating ridiculously fresh and beautifully prepared foods.
A truly wonderful anniversary weekend with the most amazing person I know…
we’re so very blessed.
This weekend we’re thinking of staying at a cultural center not far from Joburg (I’m yearning to learn more about local people and our plans to stay the weekend in a rural Swaziland community to help women carry water and heard cattle fell through- boo) and maybe hitting this lion park place where I hear you can hold white lion cubs. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again- full-on animal stalker mode.
Pics from this weekend…
the daily(ish)
I’ve loved, loved, loved having a kitchen and being able to cook again!
Howevs…
the oven buttons are really throwing me for a loop.
Friday, May 20, 2011
the daily(ish)
We’ve had an onslaught of love and support sent our way today for our anniversary. Even an awesome card made just for us…
What a great little keepsake of our 5th anniversary in Africa! Thank you M & A! And for the gorgeous little gift- we love it!
And thank you to all our loved ones that sent us such sweet messages today! We feel extra loved because of them!
We’re so blessed to have each other and so lucky to have all you wonderful people in our lives!
xoxo
Thursday, May 19, 2011
the daily(ish)
We found our guestbook entry from our time in 2009…
Seriously, if you go to South Africa- you have to stay at Utopia in Africa. So great!
Amnesty Day
In an effort to further delay my trip to the gym this morning, I was thumbing through one of my magazines and came across an article on forgiveness. It was kind of a hokey little article about women forgiving those who trespass against them- you know the whole “frenemy” thing.
I’ve never been great at forgiving or forgetting for that matter. Hello, my name is MAV and I am a total grudge holder. You hurt me, my family or someone I love and I’m pretty much done with you. I like to pretend it’s all about my deep loyalty, but in truth it is a horrible trait. Thankfully, with being a grown-up and all, I haven’t had as much opportunity to show off my awesome grudge-holding skills. We are blessed to have a slew of wonderful people in our lives. After our early twenties the drama seemed to dissipate more and more each year, but there was still some smattered here and there.
So, back to the article.
One thing about it really struck me-it was talking about how forgiveness is really more for yourself than for that other person. I immediately thought of something I heard the brilliant Dr. Joseph Lowry say when he spoke at my school about a million years ago- if you choose to hold a man in a ditch you’re just as tied to that ditch as he is.
Today I’m walking away from the ditch. So those who have wronged me, my family or my friends, those of you who begrudged us our happiness and lashed out in petty jealousy, those who let us down over and over and over, those who didn’t care about my feelings as much as I did yours- I’m no longer on patrol. You’re now free and clear from my grudges.
And so am I.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
the daily(ish)
Aw, sweet Sam from Utopia of Africa…
We were so happy to see him again! Such a great pup!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
the curse is broken!
The Wife and I fell in love with safari on our last trip to South Africa. We’ve come to learn that we love nature-filled weekends the best and well, safari is pretty much the crème de la crème of outdoorsy trips. In 2009 we did 3 safari weekends and did 7 actual game drives. Game drives are all about seeing the “Big Five”- lions, water buffalo, rhino, elephants and leopards.
Out of those 7 drives, we saw 0 leopards, even though we went to Sabi Sands which is famous for their leopard sightings. I’ll never forget on our last drive in Sabi Sands as we ran over trees and through rivers in our ranger’s valiant attempt to find a leopard for us when Frenchie leaned forward and told me we were “jingled” and would never see one. After we all laughed about being “jingled” we had to agree- maybe we were jinxed.
2 weeks before arriving I started planning our first weekend here. We were going back to Sabi Sands and come hell or high water- I was going to see a leopard!
Someone may have been “jingled” on that first trip, but it wasn’t us because…
Yeah. And she was one of the three that we got to see!
Absolute breathtaking beauty and grace.
She was by far the highlight of my weekend and I seriously got a little teary gazing up at her in the tree as she watched over her cub eating her latest kill.
I mean really? How insanely blessed we were to see this…
We actually saw all of the “Big Five” on our very first drive, although we only got a glimpse of the elephants that night as we kinda ran into them in the dark on our way to dinner. The lights startle them and the last thing you want is a startled elephant coming at you so we literally had mere seconds of them.
I had planned our weekend exactly like like our last time we did Sabi Sands, staying the night at the lovely Utopia in Africa B&B in Nelspruit and even staying at the same game lodge inside the park.
We had a wonderful home-cooked meal at Utopia Friday night…
and left just after breakfast to make it to the lodge in time for our first drive.
I could do game drives every weekend and never tire of them. We had beautiful weather and great animal sightings…
The lodge was full so we got the added treat of having dinner out in the bush at their campsite where we were entertained by some local singers and dancers…
and even serenaded by a roaring lion that was a little too close for comfort.
We were up before the sun for our second day of safari where we spotted some of the rare wild dogs, another leopard (!!), another lazy lion and had some nice time with the ellies..
The only animals we hadn’t really seen were some up-close zebras and giraffes. We ended up seeing quite a few of the pretty little disco donkeys on our way out out of the park though…
All in all a perfect weekend to begin our second time in Africa.
This weekend we’re headed to Cape Town and back to the wine country in Stellenbosch, where I hope to get to pet a cheetah. I’m in full-on animal stalker mode right now. Full-on.
Pics from the weekend…
photo credits:
all group shots- JS & MM
fish eagle- my very patient (with animals) Wife
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