"You need to go hiking in Africa and see some Anacondas and Pythons!"

Some of our latest news involves close encounters of the reptilian kind.  You might remember our post featuring a baby night adder snake several months ago.  We had been placed under strict instructions to "go hiking in Africa and see some Anacondas and Pythons!"  Well, we did go hiking in Africa recently, as part of our anniversary weekend away (more on the area we went to later) and much to our delight  from the standpoint of wanting to fulfill our oath, we had some up close views of various and sundry reptiles!  The first encounter was the closest.  While we were standing on the edge of a cliff (yes, there was a guardrail) Matt glanced down and noticed this creature not a foot away from our feet.  Remembering our sincere promise, we stopped for a picture, rather than running away.

I felt pretty safe, as it was quite chilly out and this snake was likely freezing too and not likely to want anything to do with us.  I don't know what kind of snake it is though. Maybe Mr. E, Mr. J or Mr. I (all from our most recent place of residence) can fill us in? 

The picture was worthy of a post of it's own.  However, the story doesn't end there.  The very next day, Matt and I took a boat ride and got up close to more reptiles.  We approached some sun baked rocks and saw a fast moving......PYTHON!  We were so excited that we couldn't remember how to use our cameras and get a picture before we saw him splash in the water in front of us!!  Oh man!   It was so cool.  We were sad not to get footage of it.  The boat slowed next to the rocks and we scanned them for signs of other pythons.  First to catch our eye was a monitor lizard.

Wait a minute!  What is that moving above him....oh man...another PYTHON!  And this time, we got photos.  (Maybe they would be better if I saw it sooner, or if I had a bigger lens.  But they are Python pictures just the same!

Do you see his shiny body in the grass?  Now for a shot of his head.

He was cruising down the rock face and soon disappeared into the rocks.

We were thrilled to see it, and immediately were saying how much fun it would be to share these pictures with the 3 young friends we mentioned.  If we see any more Pythons in the wild, we will be sure to share them.  Sadly, as Anacondas are not indigenous to Africa, the chances of seeing those in the wild here are quite slim. 3 snakes in 2 days though. That shows how many snakes there are here.  Kinda made me rethink my whole "lets go on a long hike through the jungle this afternooon" brainwave I'd had before these close encounters.

Well, that wasn't the end of the reptilian encounters for the day.  As we continued up the water, we saw a croc basking in the sun.

Do you see him?? How about a closer look..

He wasn't the biggest croc we have seen, but its the closest look we have had at one in the wild.

Well, we did see one more animal on our boat ride, it's not reptilian, but it is my favorite animal to see in the wild here.

This was the best picture we got of the hippos there.  They were stubborn and not posing for photos.

Well.  We have more pictures of the beautiful scenery we saw that weekend.  Let's save that for later and just dedicate this post to our friends we mentioned.  We love you and miss you, and all our friends from Worland.  We send hugs to each of you.

Love, 

Us

Memorial 2015 in South Africa

Oh my goodness, it's been a few weeks since the last post.  Sorry guys!  I thought I'd just quickly share some pictures from Memorial.  For the second year in a row we were in Africa for Memorial.  This year was quite different than the last year, and different than home as well. There is a kind provision on the day of Memorial for Special Full Time Servants in Construction or Bethel to have 1/2 day off on the day for the ministry.   So next year, when you go out in the ministry on Memorial, you can remember that you are joining the many thousands of Special Full Time Servants around the world, as well as perhaps millions of our brothers and sisters in the ministry on that day. :)  As our congregation had no afternoon field service arrangement, we talked to a couple people at a local Mall.  To prepare for the late evening, we shared a dinner at Mugg&Bean.  

Yum! 

Don't worry, Matt's lifelong ban on coffee wasn't lifted, (Although he has lifted it at least 3 times that i know of.   Excellent stories each time.)  He did have a wonderful chai, or was it hot chocolate. Can't remember now.  I do remember I had Chai.  And we shared pulled pork sandwhich.  Deeelicious. It was all quite different than other venues we have had Memorial Night meals and snacks at. Remember CowCamp in Worland?  JB's in Mountain Home? JB's in Riverton? Andy and Tera's house in Riverton? It's exciting to attend Memorial in different places.  However, we miss all of our friends and family whenever there are special theocratic events.  

It's wonderful, but we miss being home for them.  If anything has made Matt homesick here it's for Memorial, Assemblies & Conventions with our loved ones from home.

Anyways, on to the Memorial.

The requisite all dressed up pic. My mom helped me, or rather I helped her to make my dress.  Its fabric from a traditional men's longyi from Myanmar. They would wear it for special occasions, like this one.  Also, it has pockets. I love pockets in a dress.

This year I watched from above, in our balcony.  Matt was serving so I was able to keep a keen eye on things from up here.

Do you see him?

I sat with 2 lovely sisters in our hall. 

Why did I not get a Sari in Myanmar when i could have bought one cheap. WHY?!?!?!

As always, it was an excellent event.  And no matter where we go in the world, we can always count on this being the same.  Everyone wearing their most excellent clothes. Always the most respectful. Always the most special and important evening of the year.

An Update, brought to you by Matt

Believe it or not between all the Safari fun we are actually working. Last time we talked about the project I was assisting on the new Residence building and Lazuli was working in the Quality Control Lab. A lot has changed since then....

Here is what the Residence looks like now, it will be completely finished in the next month or so and handed over to Bethel, with this project complete the focus will be one the new Warehouse and the remodel of the existing Printery.

What have we been working on, well after a while working on the Residence Building they called me and said now you will be the Construction Home Overseer. I thought the Home what? That doesn't sound constructionee at all ??? But I said I would be happy do whatever I was asked to, so I got to work. Basically it involved making sure that the 150 or so people on Construction have a place to sleep and food to eat and comfortable at home. A big job because you can never make everybody happy at once.

I had to wear a tie, this was the first day on the job...

They had another brother and a sister to assist me. It was a lot of work and a lot of learning, but after about a month things started to come together. In the mean time Lazuli was moved to the Electrical Team as their Secretary. (That's right the Electrical Team while I was playing with House stuff) This was new to her and she was able to learn a lot on the office side of  Construction. 

Lazuli and the sister who trained her in Electrical 

After a few months as Home Overseer things were going fairly smoothly when I was told that now we could hand all the Construction Home over to Bethel Home which left me jobless, I wondered,"where will I go next?"

Of all the crazy things I was assigned to Electrical, so Lazuli and I were on the same team together, we were both very excited. 

Our first safety meeting together on the Electrical Team, I was still wrapping up a few Home things, hence the dress shirt...

We had a month of bliss working hand in hand, but alas it wasn't to last. It was Lazuli's turn for a new assignment, off to the Tool Crib. What's a Tool Crib? Well instead of each trade having common tools such has hammers, drills, screwdrivers, they combine them all together and check them out as needed, the advantage is less tools overall and they get maintained and cared for properly. 

 Here is what the girls started with...

And here they are now with it all set up and running, don't mess with these sisters.

As for me, now I am doing Quality Control for the electrical installation on the new Warehouse, the contractor hasn't really gotten started yet so I have been doing a lot of studying of plans and prep work because once they start it will get very busy. The warehouse has changed a lot since the last pic we posted.

Here is a pic from the same spot as the ones I posted in October.

This one is from the inside on the opposite end, it helps you appreciate just how big it is.

This one is taken from top of the concrete structure.

The whole Warehouse has to be complete by mid-November, all the Mechanical trades will start in the next few weeks and from then the chase will be on....

We also went to Kruger, on unassigned territory and moved rooms, so we will see what Lazuli wants to talk about next time.

Safari Conclusion

When we got back to camp our friend Gavin made breakfast on a Skottle Braai.  I have a picture, but I will leave it to your imagination, or you can Google. :D  He made a unique combination, bacon, eggs and...bananas.  Now, we thought that sounded um, interesting.  Turns out, it's really good!  He makes the eggs and bacon, then the bananas get caramelized in the butter, making them really sweet.

After that, we packed up and drove out of the park.

We did!

Instead of going straight home, we stopped by Kwa Maritane.  Which is African for, nice place to eat.  No, not really.  It's a safari lodge.  On our way in we saw a team of 3 men trimming off the bottom part of a door.

One to sit, one to inspect,and one to do the trimming. They were all really friendly and we went in to have a bite to eat.  Most people here are really friendly and helpful here.  It's a great place to visit.  On our way to the restaurant we saw Amarula trees.  Have you heard of Amarula?   It's a fruit they make liqueur out of. They say (whoever "they" is) that when it ferments and elephants eat it, they get tipsy.

Apparently the Amarula in the States is better than the stuff you buy here. This is based on people saying that they ship the really good stuff out. I'm not sure if that's true.  However, I am willing to agree to a blind taste test to find out for sure.

 We sat our on a deck, it was a very peaceful place to relax.  Not that the game viewing had been stressful though.

There were some friendly birds,

 After we ate, we went through a tunnel that went under the fields to a watering hole, where you have a view at eye level.

There weren't any animals at the moment, but if you happened to hit it right, it would be a very cool spot to watch them at.

Then we went home and got ready for our week.

Thank you for following along on a Safari Weekend with us.  We actually went to Kruger Park the weekend after that, but I won't show pictures from that right now.  I think it's time for Matt to write something about the project, he took our big camera on site last week,  So next time, you will hopefully hear from him.  He has had 3 different assignments since we got here, as have I.  I've had about 3.5ish.  It's been exciting to see things change and have the chance to learn lots of things, for us both.  Til next time!

Hungry Hungry Hippo

So I've decided Hippos are one of my favorite African Animals.  I really want to see Cheetah and Leopard too.  And seeing Lion is amazing.  The thing with hippos though, is that they are so cool.  And as a bonus, you will pretty much always see them, so you won't be disappointed in not seeing them. It was my goal though, to see them OUT of the water, as we only normally saw them in the water.  You wanna be in a safe place though.  Most people do know that hippos are the most dangerous animal to humans in Africa.  They aren't in the "big five," but they are very unpredictable and dangerous.  And despite their tiny legs for their huge size they can move fast!  When we got to the last watering hole I talked about in the previous post, we saw several hippos in the water, but one was by himself.  It was obvious he was just skulking off to the side, nursing his wounds.

 I'm assuming he lost his most recent spar over territory and attention of the lady hippos as he was alone and pretty scratched up.  I don't think it was his only fight either.

I love this picture.  I put the black and white I took on Instagram.

The watering hole we were at had a "hide."  This is where you can get out of your car and go into a gated walkway that leads to a viewing platform over the water.

It's so peaceful and beautiful.  Everyone is respectful and quiet and you can just enjoy the animals and nature.

It was from that walkway in the picture that we were able to watch the hippo.  We watched him for awhile and we watched the birds, even saw some fish.  Then we went back to the healing hippo.  He was starting to move around so we kept watching and sure enough, he headed for shore!

Guess he was hungry, he started to graze right away.

Is he looking at me?

He took a path parallel to the walkway so we kept moving along with him and finally got a full view.

Here is a good side view, he's massive!

We got in the car after that and tried to see if he would cross the road, but we didn't see him from there.  Not sure if we will ever see anything like that again while we are here. He was the only scratched up hippo we have seen so far. Don't feel bad for him.  He's still healthy, fat and capable of eating more, plus his wounds looked clean so he is probably just fine.  

Then we headed back to camp for brunch.

For the Birds, Pilanesberg Edition

We continued our morning drive, as we had gotten up at five it was still preeeeettty early.  We didn't see alot of larger animals for awhile but besides the large animals and the vegetation, a Safari is also about the birds.  I tried to take good picture of the birds for my Dad, because if you know him at all, you will know he loves birds.  (Hence my name. :)  

This one is a favorite of mine.  It's name is also particularly great.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Kori Bustard.  HA! Toldya it was a great name.  Bustard means "birds that walk." It's Africa's Largest Flying Bird.    They can fly but mostly don't.  They can weigh up to 19 kg or 41 pounds.  

Not a fantastic picture but you could look it up online.  The people we were with got better ones I think.  Sometimes you sacrifice taking a good picture to just enjoy watching what is going on.  Since we aren't professional photographers we can afford to play these games. :)

This one is another favorite.  Lot's of favorites here.

A European Bee Eater.  These birds are beautiful.  I never got a good photo in flight but wow, they are so colorful.

Saw these cute birds on a bridge as we drove past.

Another favorite coming up.  This also has a fantastic name.  It's the Grey Go-Away Bird.  Oh yeah!  It makes this sound that cannot be described. I'll try though.  It's the sound one might make if someone asked "how ya doing?" or here in SA they say "howzit?." Rather than say "fine" as social protocol dictates since one might be feeling emotional, cranky and probably PMSing, instead there is a scrunching up of the face out comes an irritated mewling sound that immediately shut downs further questioning.  I'm not great at bird calls, but I'm getting pretty skilled at this one.  If one is close and making it's sound and I reply we end up having a whole conversation. Matt is pretty impressed with my ability I think. How I got good at that kind of sound I'm not totally sure...................................

 One landed on our windowsill awhile back, they are actually pretty big.  They look as big as an African Grey Parrot but they may not weigh as much, I'm not sure.  They have this great punky mohawk too.

It's also called the Grey Lourie or Tiny Waluigi Bird (Waluigi! Eeek! Seriously awesome names going on.) 

I need to try to get a video but until then, I found a youtube video you can hear them distinctly on.  I'll share this link so you can hear it too.  Sounds of the African Bush-Grey Go-Away Bird

Not sure if you think my description is spot on or not, but sound is all in the ear of the hearer.

We continued on to another watering hole.  Where they had.....more birds!

Not sure of the names on these ones.  There was also hippo at this watering hole and one actually got out of the water, which was something I really wanted to see.  I'll save him for next time and keep this post just dedicated to some of the birds that I took pictures of for Dad.  

Sunrise in the Park

Rather than sleeping in..I had managed to get everyone excited to wake up before the break of dawn on Sunday and sit by a nearby watering hole in hopes of seeing some animals gathering together.  As it happens, there wasn't like, tons of action at the watering hole..just your normal hippos hanging out in the water.

We still enjoyed the early morning quiet. I took a boring little video, trying to show what it's like to sit there.  It's hard to take a good video from inside the car.

Matt says the motor running in the video is not ours, someone must have pulled up to have a look near us too.

The Moon was still out:

Besides the lazy hippos we did see a cute little bird:

We drove away in search of other things to look at.  The vegetation is beautiful and varied:

If you have extra money to spend, you could take a balloon ride over the park at sunrise:

However, watching the sunrise at a watering hole, and during a drive in our Safariesque Land Rover is still pretty great: