Last malaria pill!

to prevent malaria I had to take a whole lot of giant malaria pills, and I just took the last one! yay! I mean i guess there were no side effects, and they seem to have worked, but If there were any more you know i'd start forgetting to take them. so yay for it being done without me missing one

Lions!

As I mentioned before, we went on Safari for the second half of the trip to the Ngala private game park right next to kruger national park. The middle of the days get pretty hot even though its still spring there, so everyone wakes up at 4:30 am to go on a morning drive, hang by the pool mid day, and then go out again on an evening drive. Before the last evening drive our goal was to see lions, since the previous lion sighting had been pretty far away and we needed a better one. Luckily while we were out on the drive, another ranger went over the intercom evidently to say that lion tracks had been found and they had located a male and a female in the river bed. We headed over there, and found the lions just as the sun was going down. The lady lion stayed a little farther away so we didn't get any great photos of her, but the male just sat there with us


It became quite dark, and we decided to head back to the lodge for dinner. We wound our way almost out of the reeds , and were about to go through the last clump only about 3 or 4 yards away from the danger when....vroom, vroom....the tires were spinning but we weren't moving. We were beached.

This was behind us

and he was hungry

We were told at the start of the week never to leave the car around the cats. but clearly someone needed to get out. The ranger and tracker got out and tried to dig us out. That didnt work. Another land rover drove by and tried nudging us out. That didnt work.

Finally another ranger car came out with rope, but we didnt budge. Slowly we had to leave our safe vehicle and walk to the empty one so they could jack up our car and get it out.

We were finally free!

Penguins! (and babboons)

Our last day in cape town we took a drive down to the Cape of Good Hope. On the way there we stopped at a beach to see a penguin colony. If you know me at all you know how much I love penguins, so it was awesome.

Just check out how in love these guys are :

And how can you not love their walk:


As we continued on we came across a traffic jam caused by a whole group of Baboons! We were told to lock our doors b/c this might happen:

The best part was the adorable baby baboons!!!:

speaking of those jerky baboons, lets fast forward a bit to the safari. We each had our own little huts with very basic locking mechanisims, and we were told to keep them locked to keep out "bush criminals"...well we locked the doors at every possible moment, but the bush criminals broke in TWICE! They ate all the snacks I was traveling with!! They did leave one individual packet of nutella, but even that had thier teeth marks in it. Jerks.

I'm Back From South Africa

I had an amazing trip which will take more than one blog posting.I'll do it in chronological order Robben's island, penguins, baboons, and then lions.

For our first part of the trip we stayed in Cape Town and got to tour around a little bit. Our first stop (well...after shopping) was to Robben's Island. And no, we didnt just go b/c we saw it in Invictus. The tour was very interesting. First you get on a bus where one of the former political prisoners gave you a tour of the whole island and a little about the pre apartheid time on the island with the leper colony etc. The island was beautiful, it was so hard to imagine it being used for such terrible purposes. The bus we took had written down the side "the journey is never long when freedom is the destination"

Then we got dropped off at the jail where another former prisoner showed us the terrible living conditions and dining hall etc. The last stop was to Nelson Mandela's cell that he lived in for 18 years. It was miserable! Even the dog kennels we saw earlier on the tour were bigger. Its just amazing to me that he could be released from prison and still have such a positive outlook, and to teach people never to forget, but to forgive.

Blog Frequency

I will be taking a short break from blogging for the next week and a half. On friday I head out to South Africa and i'll be surprised if i have the opportunity to blog. If i get a chance i'll try and post some pictures, but its doubtful.

I'm prepared for my series of long flights with about 7 movies queued up on my ipad...we've got bottle rocket, julie and julia, the informant, walk hard, greenberg, date night, and youth in revolt, along with some episodes of flight of the conchords. should be a fun trip! I think i'm most excited to see the penguins while in cape town, but thats mainly b/c most of hte animals on the safari portion of the trip already scare me.

Should be fun! see you in 2 weeks.

Wisconsin weekend

I'm back from a long weekend in Wisconsin for Mike and Tristan's wedding. The wedding was beautiful.

We arrived on thursday night, and met up with Jessica and Robbie friday morning to go sight seeing. We started the day with an "early" lunch (early only by midwest time zones, but noon back on the coast) at some brewpub where we had the most delicious raspberry beer. We continued on to a tour of the Pabst mansion. We took the mansion tour which was lead by this very old lady. In the "medical things and quackeries" room, the tour guide decided to read from a pamphlet in the room that she had never seen before and begins to read "dr. mcfilthy's crotch powder" and got so embarassed that she punched jessica in the arm exlaiming "i cant believe i read that outloud!"

We then moved on to the lakefront brewery, which is the first certified organic brewery. They had the best pumpkin beer that i've ever tried. We then moved on to bar louie to cash in on our free drink coupons. We ordered a drink called the smore, and they had run out of marshmallows so she gave us "cholives" in our drinks! We'd never had them before, but they were delicious...I say this in the past tense b/c we looked them up later and the company closed down..so we possibly ate the last cholives in existence. They are chocolate truffles in the shape of olives if you were wondering. delicious!

The Sound of Music

Last night we went to see the sound of music at wolf trap. its my all time favorite movie, so i was super excited to see the show. It was very different from the movie which surprised me a lot.
We packed a great picnic and the smartest thing we did all night was rent lounge chairs from wolftrap. I dont know how i've made it through other shows there without it! I cant wait to see another show there :)