fish river canyon & ais ais hotsprings (namibia, april 2015)

After a few nights in the Richtersveld, we were ready to head further north into the Namibian side of the Ai-Ais/Richtersveld border park. We'd been camping along the Orange River and now it was time to cross it. 

When we arrived at Ai Ais, we were a little dismayed to find that there were no cold swimming pools. It was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the only pool to be found was a hot spring that had to be about 95 degrees. Refreshing. 

After a couple of sleepless nights in still, humid heat, we were ready to see the Fish River Canyon and get outta dodge. Luckily the Canyon did not disappoint. It is the second-largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and we were both impressed. 

Crossing the mighty Orange River on this barge! 

Jim loves a boat!

Jennifer at camp. Too hot for anything but our swimmies. That rain did not make it to us, but the rainbow was pretty.

Jim at camp one morning. No rain fly on this tent - we were desperate for a breeze.

Despite the definite "parking lot" vibe, Ai Ais did grow on us.

Off for a trek! The five-day hike through the Fish River Canyon ends here - we walked a bit of the end of the trail to see what we could see. 

A beautiful kingfisher!

THE CANYON

wildflowers, spring 2014 (clanwilliam, south africa)

We were busy this "spring" and never got around to posting these photos from our wildflower-viewing weekend in September.

Every spring in the dry veld of the Western Cape (north and west of Cape Town), a really magical bloom of wildflowers takes place. The absolute best ones are supposedly about 7 hours away in Namaqualand; we didn't make it that far, but we did get to Clanwilliam this year and really enjoyed the weekend driving through fields and exclaiming over the colors.

We're heading back up this way next week for our last trip in southern Africa before we head back Stateside. As you can see from our lack of posting on the blog, this year has been busier than last with fewer weekend trips - we're not exactly tourists here any more! But we are looking forward to getting out for a few more long weekends and taking advantage of school holidays before we leave Cape Town permanently in June. (Tears are forming just thinking about it!)

Til then, enjoy a few sunny flowers now that it's turning to spring in the northern hemisphere!

children's home in komga with jon, mike, jim, amy, mark, the volunteers, aunties, uncles, and the kids!

Our last stop in Komga was very important to all of us--we wanted to see all of the good work that Amy and Mark Rolfes were up to at the Children's Home.  We met some great people--five volunteers that had just graduated from Notre Dame, Aunties and Uncles who keep the kids in order, and of course the kids!

We had a fun morning hanging out with the kids who didn't go home during the school holiday that was happening when we were there.  Jon and I were able to secure a piece of metal from one of the tennis court stands that looked in danger of causing multiple wounds this year as kids were pedaling their bikes past it at top speed.  We were bending metal right and left, but eventually prevailed in moving the nuts that hadn't been spun in 20+ years.  Meantime, the kids were drawing pictures of me on the tennis court with rocks.  Each drawing surpassed the one before it until I was a long-haired caricature with huge breasts and a skirt, ha ha!  I was impressed with the playful creativity of the kids, but needless to say Mike was VERY impressed to the point that he had trouble keeping himself from laughing to tears.

Mark and Amy put us up for the night at a local lodge and we had some great Kudu lasagna that reminded me of all the times I ate my Dad's venison tomale pie.

This time in Komga sealed a great trip and ended our great adventure into the Eastern Cape of South Africa.  We then spent a whole day at the pool, playing tennis, and doing nothing at the mansion to make sure the boys were recovered for their long trip home.

Thanks a ton for coming down here Mike and Jon!  It made the whole South African experience more real for Amy & Mark and me & Jennifer--it is a long ways away from the people we care about and it means a lot!

Below is a joke to start the post, "continue the joke"

This is Mike's form of manual zoom--screenshot, zoom, screenshot, zoom, screenshot.  Killer look from the Dossie!

        

  

Jon preparing some extra food to bring to the Komga Children's Home.  If only we hadn't decided it was best to consolidate the fries into one of the trays, the salad into another, and the pies into another.  We could have just left them all in their trays!  Mike and I enjoyed watching Jon try to close these trays--the task was meant for more nimble fingers.

Jon and Amy under the Acacia Tree.

Mike using the universal tourist symbol.

Curious gazes from Jon, Amy, and Mike.

This is the ravine next to the lodge where we stayed in Komga. 

Looking out away from the ravine.

Must be a typical scene at the Children's Home.

addo elephant park with mike, jon, and jim

Rule number one on game drives:  don't get out of the vehicle.  Most tempting rule to break when one needs to find something in the back of the car:  Rule number one.  We had a good time breaking this rule when I was looking for the talisman Mike brought along to give us good luck.  We were having a relatively crappy game drive (nothing but zebras, kudus, and warthogs) up until this point and really wanted to see some lions--so the effort was to recover our lucky talisman, then we would begin seeing big game.  After a fruitless search I climbed back in the car and began driving around the bend...about 200 meters until we saw a pride of lions relaxing next to the road.  Yikes!  That is why you don't get out of the car, ha ha.

We had a blast seeing the animals, cruising around the park, and saving two German fraulines from a gigantic spider.  Good thing our ladies have us disciplined--we recovered the spider and left immediately to recline to a chapter from World War Z--the zombie epic that we were reading to each other in the car.

One of Mike's best sitings was a hare, sitting next to the road just behind a hill so that oncoming traffic could not see us.  We had time to pause for a picture, then get out of the way!

Other fantastic sitings included rhinos, elephants, leopard tortoises, kudus, and of course--the lions.

This makes me wan to eat a salad.

Or be a tortoise

Not a dung beetle though.

Imagine the scene in Money Python... "Run away!  Run away! Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop" 

hiking in the nyungwe national park (rwanda, near borders of congo and burundi)

Here is a highlight reel from one hike we took in Nyungwe Forest National Park in Rwanda. This park was tough to get to - we drove for six hours across the entire country, on winding hilly roads - and a bit hard to access once we got there: you can only hike in the park with a ranger, and the rangers only go on specific trails at specific times of day (when we asked to go on the 9am hike at 9:05, they told us we were too late). 

BUT when we finally got out in to the forest, it was beautiful. 

A young mahogany tree.

Forest ants eat all the dead leaves off the forest floor and recycle nutrients back into the ground. There were thousands of them in this line, going back and forth. And they bite! 

More ants.

We spotted a bush viper! Our guide was really excited - these are rare. It was a small snake, barely a foot long, but apparently quite poisonous.

epic trip of volcanoes (athens, santorini & crete, greece)

Here is the excerpt from the epic summer post:

The volcanoes bit has to do with us always traveling around volcanoes during this trip--we realized that volcanoes were the major commonality through Greece, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

Greece

We left Ann Arbor on June 26th to join Lindsey and Adam and Adam’s parents Diane and Grier for a beautiful 10 days in Greece. Jim and I landed in hot Athens, lugged our backpacks onto the metro, and walked through the streets in our hiking boots, positively sweating, to find our hostel room’s AC didn’t work! But we had great souvlaki (kebab) for dinner along with Alfa beers, and walked the pedestrian streets around the Acropolis (the center of ancient Athens) in a beautiful Friday night twilight filled with street musicians, kids playing soccer, couples walking arm-in-arm, and the lights on the Acropolis shining dramatically above us.

The next day, we took a ferry to Santorini and started in on some aggressive sun-bathing and beach-going. Santorini is a volcanic island that erupted around 1700 BC, eliminating most of its population as well as much of the population of Crete, an hour by ferry to the south, where an enormous tsunami engulfed most of the coastal towns—almost every town is coastal on Crete. Today, the volcano’s caldera is filled with Mediterranean sea, and the dramatic cliffs left from the eruption make for a stunning viewpoint. The Davis’ had a beautiful hotel and pool which we got to share for three days with views out over the caldera. We also explored local beaches, including one with a nude beach down the way, where we played volleyball with some professional soccer players from Italy. Lindsey and Jennifer especially enjoyed their volleyball attire and rippling abdominal muscles. Their girlfriends were pretty nice looking too. We also got to enjoy the tradition of drinking raki before and after every meal at a beautiful little mountainside restaurant called something like Myxonos, where we had the most amazing lamb in yoghurt sauce served with bulgar wheat.

They mix the raki with honey and cinnamon and heat it up for an after-dinner treat – absolutely delicious. Even Diane and Greer, who don’t drink, enjoyed it. From Santorini, we went on to Crete where we saw the ruins of an ancient Minoan palace (~2300-1400 BC) and then went on to a beautiful little town called Chania, which had been occupied by Venetians who left their mark with an old walled city that looked like Italy. The whole group especially enjoyed a day trip to the southern side of Crete – a stunning 2-hour drive through a mountain pass, then we arrived in a tiny quiet town with about 8 restaurants and not much else, situated on a secluded beach with cliffs all around. We hiked to some Roman ruins called Lissos, where we found almost no people and the clearest water ever. Jim was in heaven with his swim goggles after walking through ancient tombs and a church that dated to Byzantium—a period he studied in his only art history class. We found a water taxi there—Jim had to run to the water 1⁄2 an hour ahead of the crew to ask for a ride—to take us back to the town.

From Chania, Adam, Lindsey, Jim and I flew back to Athens to mentally prepare ourselves for our return to Africa We visited the Acropolis and the museum, and spent a night frolicking in the city before heading to the airport. After many drinks at dinner the waiter felt compelled to give us directions to our hotel, which only required one right turn.

This is the Davis Suite that Jennifer and I were indulged with.  Behind this camera angle you would see the view below.

These are the cliffs of Santorini--facing the left-center of the cauldera.

This was the nudey beach that we discovered.  Swimming naked in the day is a lot of fun--or at least that is what we heard.  The crazy rock formations are caused by the uplift of the island, and erosion over time--the rock is a very soft pumice that was deposited after the latest eruption.  Think Mt. St. Helens, but an even bigger explosion/eruption.

These are some tasty rock lobsters!  And way too expensive to purchase. 

This is the port of Hia with the town above on the hill.  If you look closely you can see the lit pathway that donkeys and people travel every day to and from the port.

A sunset with Grecian wine and fresh olives.

Here is the whole sunset crew--minus Adam who is taking the picture.

This pretty much sums up what life on Santorini was like for us.

This is the first picture in the town of Hania on the island of Crete.  This hill has been occupied for over 6,000 years continuously by many famous civilizations including the Minoans, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Ottomans, Germans, and most recently Greece.  This particular building was destroyed by German bombs during WWII and has been left in this condition because the owners are still saving money to cover the cost of repairs.  There were a few buildings like this in central Hania, but tourist dollars have helped to instigate many renewal projects so vacant buildings are less common.