Travelling Tuesday: African Wild Animals!

My humblest apologies that all has been quiet on the blogging front for a few days now. I was SICK SICK SICK! One of those crazy 24 hour things that makes you despair of life and wonder if it’s really worth going on. (Don’t worry, my one reader with emetophobia, I won’t go into detail!) Fortunately, I am on the other side and incredibly thankful that (yes I did the math) I’ve lived well over 10,000 days so far, and I’ve only had one like that. One in 10,000 — no cause for complaint!

Anywho, after that lengthy introduction, it is Travelling Tuesday! As promised, I have some stories and shots from our travels up to Bloemfontein, where we are spending the holidays with Mark’s parents (and his sister when she arrives!) The roads are very busy and therefore a bit dangerous this time of year, so we decided to come early to avoid the traffic, since we can still do a lot of our work getting Samaritan’s Feet started from here. Modern communications are a wonderful thing! We thought breaking the trip up over three days (staying overnight in a couple different places) would make it an easier journey with the Bear. We were wrong. Yes, it was still cheaper than flying, but dern, it was a lot of travelling! I don’t think the Bear enjoyed his tent being pitched in a new spot each night or finding himself in the car seat again each morning. So next time we’ll probably do the 10+ hour journey in one day. As they say in the South, we oughta just git ‘er done. Lesson learned!

As mentioned, these travelling adventures brought us face to face with many dangerous wild animals. This is Africa people! We stopped off in a place outside Oudtshoorn called Calitzdorp the first night. And just outside our little self-catering hut we spotted a big, scary…

praying mantis!!!!

Okay not so scary. Still, a little creepy. You’ve heard how vociferous the females are, right? Well then, we went for a walk, and we came face to face with a huge, and very dangerous…

Farm-raised ostrich!!!!!!!!

Behind a fence.

But if he got near the fence…and we were too close…seriously people, they can kick like ninjas, beware!!  Then it got really dangerous. I’m not even joking this time. We came face to face with a grumbly…grizzly…

Wild Bear!!

You’ve given up on me, haven’t you? Africa’s not as wild as you were hoping, mayhaps? Let’s give it one last try.  The final creature to give us a fright appeared as we were journeying to Nieu Bethesda for our second night’s stay along the way to Bloemfontein. And you do not want to come face to face with one of these. It’s a big, scaly…

Om… likkewaan!!

This creature kind of looks like a gila monster…and was probably like 4 ft. long! The Afrikaans word for it is likkewaan, pronounced LOOK-a-vahn, but the English word is leguan. I wasn’t familiar with either, but the Afrikaans is more fun to say. Sure, I took this picture from the window of the car, but still, he could’ve gone T-Rex on us at any moment! Grrrr. We actually think maybe it was a her…do you think she looks preggers? I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Well, that’s a taste of our dangerous travels from Gordon’s Bay to Bloemfontein with Calitzdorp and Nieu Bethesda in between. Thank the Lord for Mr. Potato Head safely navigating our passage and never stranding us in the wild among these dangerous creatures!

Happy Trails to you, wherever the road takes you!