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Week 3 in Jo'burg:
We've now had 3 weeks here and we feel like locals. The sun continues to shine during the day tricking you into thinking its summer but it still gets really cold in the evenings and at night to remind you its winter. We are constantly having to put on clothes or take them off to suit the time of day so layering is the answer!
This week we had a day off in the week-day for womens' day, which is a public holiday and we have been exploring some more of the local neighbourhoods with great cafes, shops and restaurants. Our respective works are still going well and we are still managing to get to the gym. Dipa has been helping at the Orphanage with some of their admin work, especially building some databases to save paperwork (volunteer and orphan details etc.) - she couldn't stay away very long from excel and spreadsheets, as you will know! She also went to the school sports day at sparrow schools, which was really good fun. Jonny has been meeting a wide range of the population at work, including some men from the local prison. He has been spending his days removing lumps and bumps, stitching wounds and passing catheters.....basically getting involved in all activities required in such a busy surgical team.
At the weekend we headed off to Pilanesberg National Park on Friday for a 2 night safari break. Jonny has never been on safari before, so he was very excited. Pilansberg is only a couple of hours from Johannesburg and is full of gorgeous hills and lakes, the result of historical volcanic erruptions. The varied landscape is home to a huge variety of animals including the 'big 5'. As you will see from the photos, we saw lots and lots of different animals. The list is very long but included lions, girraffs, white rhino, jackals, elephants, hippos, etc. We stayed in a safari tent (although note: these are tents with proper beds, electricity, en suite bathroom and other modern conveniences! This is more Dipa's idea of camping than Jonny's!!), which were lovely but got very cold at night. As our tent was within the National Park, ,you could hear many animal noises at night which included hearing some roaring lions and many cheeky monkeys! We had to get up just after 5am to go for a sun-rise safari drive, which was well worth it as we had the park to ourselves and we saw more animals. One of the highlights was seeing and hearing a male lion roar so loudly that it echoed all around the valleys (a sound you can never forget). We also did an evening game drive, saw a lot more animals including the rarely seen white rhino as well as watching the sun set in this magical place. The following day we drove around the park ourselves and encountered lots more animals. The Spark managed surprisingly well!!
The other thing we did over the weekend was visit a crocodile sanctuary, which houses literally thousands of crocodiles (including one the size of a bus!). The sanctuary is made up of raised wooden walkways over crocodile pools, meaning you could get very close to them. Being surrounded on all sides by crocodiles, separated only by an old rickety walkway was quite a scary experience. At the end Jonny got to hold one of the baby crocodiles (something Dipa unsurprisingly didn't fancy!).
We ended the weekend back in Jo'burg by meeting up with a few more of Dipa's friends from Anglo for dinner which was great (thanks to Michelle, Nono and Tapiwa for your recommendation of George's on 4th).
We only have a few days left in Jo'burg before we head to Cape Town (where our next blog will be from) so we are keen to make the most of it!
- comments
Manny & Rachel Blam!!! Everything is sounding good!! Look forward to hearing more cool stuff in cape town!