September 25, 2008

We're headed back to Burkina!

After our 40-day hiatus here in Pretoria, South Africa, we are cleared to go back to work in Burkina Faso. Yippee! We are both as healed as can be and are looking forward to FINALLY getting back to being Peace Corps volunteers again.

Sonia's hip is doing well. She's gotten pretty used to her crutches by now. Here's the x-ray showing the three titanium screws placed in her leg, a nice little souvenir she'll have well, forever. We're planning to give them a test-run through the many metal detectors we'll pass through this weekend en route to Ouagadougou. Go-go Gadget hip!



Thank you EVERYONE for all of the warm wishes and good thoughts you've sent us over the last month. What an experience. We're both a bit nervous to be getting back and just hope we can get back into the swing of things quickly.

While this wasn't a vacation by any means, we did have a wonderfully relaxing time. We wish we could have seem more of South Africa, but now feel like we have a good reason to come back some day (not due to medical reasons of course). Pilanesberg was amazing and we'd love to get over to see Kruger Park, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, and the rest of the Western Cape (the Bordeaux of Africa).

We leave you with a couple of snapshots we took here in Pretoria at the National Botanical Garden. It wasn't quite as spectacularly botanical as we had hoped, but saw some nice cacti and a few flowers.

funny looking cactus people


some kind of cactus flower


a little waterfall pond thing

September 8, 2008

The road to recovery passes through Pilanesberg National Park



The road to recovery has been pretty smooth thus far. We really have no idea what lies ahead until we meet with Sonia's surgeon next week. But it seems to be going well. Sonia is walking a ton and with just one crutch now. In a couple days she should be crutch free. So until our next appointment/x-ray, we're just healing, relaxing, watching A LOT of television and eating all of those Westernized foods we've been missing (ice cream, pizza, cheese, etc.)

We decided that instead of sitting around all day, we should try and get out to see a bit of South Africa while we're here (because who knows when we might have a chance to come back). So over the weekend we took a small safari day-trip to Pilanesberg National Park (about 1.5hrs from Pretoria) to have our own little Lion King experience. Holy cow it was awesome.

Again, the pictures tell a better story, but we were so excited to see all of the "zoo animals" outside of a zoo. In the "wild" as you might call it. We got to see loads of white rhinos, elephants, zebras, giraffes, hippos, baboons, gazelles...

African elephant


Giraffe


White rhinos


Zebras


Hippo


Baboon


We didn't get a chance to see the big kitties in the wild, but did get to go to a cool Lion park where they study lions. We got to hold lion cubs and see A LOT of big lions just a link-fence away. So cool. Apparently Mariah Carey had even visited this place once, so you know it must be good.

Lion kitties (meow!)












Thanks for all of the warm wishes and good thoughts. It's definitely working. With any luck we'll be back in Burkina by the end of next week.

Out-takes


Animal butt shots









Sonia's mandatory sunset shots