Trip update

Hello from Johannesburg!!!

It is 6:00 am on Tuesday morning here, we are rested and ready to start the next section of our journey.

Our flight was about 1.5 hours late due to a thunderstorm in Atlanta, but it was one of the most effortless 15 hours flights we have ever been on. We paid a bit extra for Comfort Plus seats which gave us more legroom, plugs for our devices, and nicer food. It was worth every penny!!

And EVERY person that we have dealt with has been smiling and kind and fun to talk to!!

The colors in the Johannesburg airport were excellent, all represented in this fun wall in the baggage area…..

We were met at the airport by the greeters from AfricaSky guesthouse and driven to our sleeping quarters for the evening.

BUT FIRST….there was dinner…..at 10:00 pm!! I had a marvelous chicken schnitzel and excellent veggies, finishing with a bread pudding and a cup of tea.

We waddled back to our room and fell into bed. The 5-hour sleep was short but definitely effective!! We are both feeling great this morning as we head to Mozambique and Coutada 11!!

You might think that the word guesthouse might mean a basic living space but not here.

Here is our room for the evening…..

….and nothing says “Welcome” like towel Elephants!!!

But the BEST thing about the room was sharing the bathroom with a Rhino…..

…..In A BATHTUB!!!!

Stay tuned…..I may not have internet capabilities for the next week, but will certainly catch you up when we are wired again!!

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Today is the day!!!

This afternoon Michael and I will be boarding a Delta Flight to Johannesburg and will be traveling in Africa for 3 weeks!!

We start out in Mozambique where we will check on the fate of the Cheetahs that we saw released back in 2021…..

The Days the Cheetahs arrived

We will also be checking on the 24 lions that were released there in 2018. At last count, there were well over 90!!

We spent 6 weeks in the Mozambique camp in 2021 and it feels like we are returning home again….

I am hoping to spend a day or two just photographing and videoing, and will hopefully see more of the Saddle-Billed Storks that I am collage appliqueing….

After that week, we fly back to South Africa and will spend another week on the Eastern Cape where Michael will be doing some conservation research.

We spend the last week in the Kalahari Desert area, working alongside scientists doing genetic research on (the very rare) Black and White Rhinos.

We are both looking forward to this trip and I can’t wait to tell you about ALL of it!!

I am not sure that internet will be available so I have some quilting posts queued up for the next few weeks, but I am hopeful to add some “man on the ground” stories too.

I will probably not be cross-posting to various Facebook groups, so IF you only see this blog because of those posts, you will lose out on this trip.

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Bush Dinner….

We are finally nearing the end of our Mozambique trip posts, but I couldn’t stop without talking about our bush dinner!!

On our last Thursday in camp, most of the visitors were getting ready to leave in the next two days, including us on Saturday.

As we headed out for the afternoon, we asked Dylan where were going and he said that it was a surprise!!

We traveled into an area that we hadn’t visited previously and enjoyed the views as we drove around.

As we drove, I kept seeing glimpses of other trucks carrying other guests. This seemed strange to me because in all of our days in camp, we seldom ever saw any other groups when were out. The staff actually worked hard to keep us all separated!!!

Then Dylan turned one corner and we were met with a sweet, sweet sight. The camp workers had built a huge fire pit surrounded by comfortable chairs…..

….. and tables and tables of food and drink!!!

As we sat around talking and reminiscing about the past 10 days, the sun slowly started to sink in the West….

…turning a deeper shade of red as it went…..

Finally providing the perfect backdrop for some safari photos…..

This one is of Mary Cabela posing with many of the amazing folks who made our trip so special……

As the night became darker, we enjoyed watching the fire….

…and reveling in the people around us.

We started talking about how to use our phones to take great night-sky photos so many traipsed out into the bush behind the fire to try our skills…..

I wish that I could remember now exactly how I did this!!!

And of course, there were the various nature calls that took us into the dark forest areas behind the firepit.

The funny thing about this is that we all joked about the fact that there were lions roaming around and we laughed that they were out there watching us.

Well, as several of the groups were leaving, they ran across three male lions in the area….VERY close to where we had been. And, the next morning, when they went back to clean the area, there were lion tracks EVERYWHERE!!!

Apparently, the lions thought that we were a little too silly and, fortunately, they prefered their prey to be a bit more serious.

It was a sweet remembrance of an amazing trip…..

Preparing the rice…

When I wrote about Lunch at Zak’s house, I forgot to show you how the rice is prepared for cooking, so here goes…..

This is how the rice looks when it comes in from the field……

It is allowed to dry and then is processed so that it can be cooked and eaten.

In my world, this is all done for me and I buy my bag of Mahatma rice and pour it into the pot. Things are not as easy in Mozambique!!!.

The unhulled rice is put into a large mortar and pestle and then the work begins…

If the rice needs to be ground into flour, it is done using two rocks…..

…which produces a fine powder…..

I was interested to look at the tools that they use for this process. Both the mortar and the pestle have carvings on them…..

I guess this is a way to bring a little bit of creativity to their lives, much the same as my female ancestors using quilts to bring some color to theirs!!!

It was yet another eye-opening look into the lives of the villagers of the Marromeu Complex!!!

Beautiful Flora in Marromeu Complex

Yesterday we talked about the trees of Marromeu…..today let’s move to other types of flora!

Dylan kept reminding me that it was mid-winter there and that flowers were few and far between, but we still managed to see some gorgeous specimens!!

The most interesting was this flower that is fairly rare and Dylan said we were lucky to see one in bloom.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the plant, but the up-close photos were something to remember…..

This delicate plant was found in one of the pans that we walked thru…..

Remember that the pans are depressions in the earth that are filled with grass and often contain water during the wet seasons…..

This flower reminds me of some that are growing in my yard right now….

And, no matter where I am, I will take photos of Water Lillies……

This pond was in the middle of one of the pans and I would have loved to get closer but that would have meant a lot of wading.

On our last day, Dylan wanted to show us one of the interesting vines in the area. This vine holds water and the larger animals (particularly the elephants) will scout it out for hydration.

Dylan kept his eyes in the forest beside the road as he drove and quickly found what he was looking for. He ued the machette to cut a 3-foot chunk out of the woody vine and then demonstrated how much water it would hold…..