Friday, September 3rd

We had plans to go to Mozambique for the weekend to see Mark’s brother, Todd. Due to political unrest in the country it is not currently safe to travel there so we have changed plans. Evidently the people were protesting due to the increase in gas and bread prices. The police were “managing” the situation with rubber bullets. Sixteen people were killed when they switched over to live ammunition. Now there are riots. So we’ll spend three days fishing and traveling into the big game reserve Kruger National Park where we hope to see lions and leopard. And more elephants.

Mark catching rainbow trout in the Sabie River. He was pleasantly surprised to catch 9 fish on his fancy new fly rod.

Wednesday, September 1st

Today is the first day of spring and we are happy to be back “home” with our host family. Here are Francois , age 9(called Pukkie – short u sound) and Franzel, age 12, building legos with Hans and Annika. Teammates Laurie, age 14, and Dominique, age 14, help Hans clean out the rondavel to make a place for their LEGO robotics team to practice. I will be coaching this team called Jinx-Jinx (it means computer wizard in Afrikaans). Our other team members will be Zac, Hans’s friend from Florida, and Annika who has recently been switched over to this team.

Johannesburg - Tuesday, August 31st

We toured Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg with 5 other people and our friendly guide named Efram. The locker rooms were very unimpressive but the stadium and field were pretty cool. The kids would liked to have kicked the ball around but we were not allowed on the grass. Its capacity is 90,000 people.

Apartheid Museum

We were not allowed to take any photos inside of the museum. We read about the history of apartheid for over 3 ½ hours and then came to a sign saying we were at the half way point of the tour…as we were heading back to our host family that evening and wanted to minimize the time we traveled in the dark we cut our tour short (it gets dark about 6:15 PM). There are not words to describe the emotions of this experience.

8-29 Driving and the Big Hole

An uneventful day of driving to Kimberly where we are staying at the old jail house which has been converted into a hostel. A self-guided tour of the diamond mine in Kimberly was interesting. No great photos to share. We are getting better at driving on the left side of the road but don’t yet have the blinker signaling down – we have very clean windows though! It seems 95% of the vehicles here are white – ours included. The 8 passenger van we bought has been good to us so far. The sunroof came in handy when we were viewing animals on safari. The roads are narrow here and lots of people walk along the side of the road hitchhiking. It is not uncommon to see pickups (they call them bakkies) with 10 people standing in the back or vans stuffed with as many people as can fit.

Deb

8-28 Robben Island and winery

We were very disappointed to have to wait 3 days for a spot on a tour of Robben Island and then have the tour cancelled due to poor weather and rough seas. Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held during the apartheid years. We did enjoy the museum on the mainland as we learned about how soccer became an important part of the social lives of prisoners.

We went to Simonvlei, a winery just outside Capetown. We were disappointed it was not more of a tour as we wanted to learn about the process of wine making and grape growing. It turned out to be more of a wine tasting event.

Deb

8-27 hiking Table Mountain and Green Point stadium

We got some first-hand experience with vuvuzelas at the kick off to the 2010 ABSA Premier Soccer League. It was a double header at Green Point stadium with Orlando Pirates beating Vasco De Gama 2-1 and Ajax Capetown beating Bloemfontein Celtics 2-0. We all enjoyed being in the stadium and YES the vuvuzelas are loud!

We hiked up Table Mountain – a major landmark in Capetown- on a hike called Plattklip. It was an intensely vertical hike through a pretty gorge. We were disappointed when at the top we learned the cable car down the mountain was closed for maintenance. Two days later our calves are still sore.

Deb