Farewell South Africa

This will be my last Blog posting from South Africa. We are in preparations to return back to North America, and will be leaving our house tomorrow, leaving Durban for Cape Town on Nov. 27, and leaving Cape Town for Toronto and our holiday travels on Dec. 1. We will post more photos of South Africa though before we're finished with this site ... particularly of Cape Town. We have had the most amazing experience here ... there is so much to say about it, but I'm too tired at the moment from packing all day to even try to put anything sensible into words.

On Saturday, our friends threw us an amazing farewell party (at our house), which included all sorts of festivities ... swimming, rugby watching (go Springboks!), and a Christmas gift exchange. As you can see from the photos above, we all had such a great time, especially the kids. We are really going to miss these friends, but we're hoping to have lots of visits from them in the future!

Mitchell Park

We had a lovely outing this morning with our friends the Elsners (Martin, Lisa, Hannah, Olivia and Christian) at Mitchell park. It's an old, established local park featuring a small zoo, beautiful gardens, a tea garden and a playground.

Safari Day Two

Most of these photos were taken during the morning guided drive I (Judy) took. It was well worth it to start out at 5 am ... especially to see the lions! We observed the male and female lion during their mating ritual -- very interesting!

Safari Day One

The boys were such troopers as we drove around the Hluhluwe-uMfolozi game reserve all day looking for animals. James has discovered a new talent ... taking photographs. He wanted to do it all weekend long!

Hilltop Camp

We just had to see animals one more time before returning to North America, so we spent the weekend at Hilltop Camp in the Hluhluwe-uMfolozi Game Park. These are a few scenes from the camp.

Halloween in South Africa?

Although they don't officially celebrate Halloween in South Africa, we got together for a little Halloween party with some superhero friends from school. We made cupcakes and pizzas and carved pumpkins ... okay so it isn't exactly pumpkin season right now which would explain the greem pumpkins!

Andrew's Batman Costume

Andrew loves his batman costume so much, that he wants to wear it almost every day after school. He never wants to part with it ... not even for washing, so he has devised a clever way to keep an eye on his costume in the wash. Sindi gets a big kick out of this morning ritual with Andrew!