Blank Canvas

Katie mentioned on her blog the other day (or perhaps it was Jessica?) that when she was at the Cape of Good Hope she realized there was nothing between her and Antarctica. That came back to me this weekend while Mason and I were out hiking.

I grew up my entire life in the same house. I never vacationed outside of Utah and Idaho as a kid other than two bus trips for high school to California and Oregon. I don’t think I ever really cared. Then I served a mission to Costa Rica and the world opened up to me. I think the moment that changed me forever happened while I was serving in Nicoya, Guanacaste. I was speaking with a couple of guys and it was clear they were treating me exactly as they would another Costa Rican. They weren’t speaking slowly or avoiding slang. I soon found that one of them didn’t realize I wasn’t Costa Rican. To be treated as an equal, as part of a group totally different from my own, completely changed me. I had a desire to see the world and have people around the world affect my life.

When I read Katie’s blog I realized that she had now staked down her canvas for us to paint on. There are lots of places to see and lots of things to do, but she has her canvas.

In the South, she staked it down at the Cape of Good Hope.

In the North, she staked it down watching the Northern Lights with me, north of the Arctic Circle in Lapland, Sweden.

In the West, she staked it down celebrating our tenth anniversary hiking in Kauai (at least I think this is a great West).

In the East, she staked it down when we brought home our sweet Lula from Vietnam.

How cool to have a canvas! I can’t wait to get to the Cape of Good Hope so I can stake mine down as well. And I look forward to painting by numbers all across this beautiful canvas. The world seems so small until you try to see it all.

Ups and downs in Drakensberg

Warning: Long Post Ahead.

Mason and I snuck away from the chaos of Joburg this weekend to do some hiking together in Drakensberg. I had never heard of Drakensberg before we moved to South Africa, but when I read that Steve Davey had named it one of forty places you must see before you die, saw that it was a World Heritage Site, and was within a few hours of Joburg I decided I had to find a way to make it down there. Drakensberg is basically an enormous geological escarpment that creates the border between South Africa and Lesotho. It is the reason Lesotho has been able to maintain isolation from South Africa through the centuries.

It is easier said than done to find this massive wall, especially in the dark. Mason and I finally got to our “chalet” at 11:30pm. The reception was closed. They had a pegboard with keys for late arrivals on the wall, but our name wasn’t on the board. We did the only moral thing to do in such a circumstance – we took the keys belonging to S & I Stever. We got up at 6am, made the bed and put the keys back on the board, grateful that Mr. and Mrs. Stever never showed. No one even knew we’d been there until we returned later in the day during business hours to let them know they should probably wash the sheets and take our R700.

Since we had arrived during the night, we had no real idea where we were and what to expect. When we opened our window, this is what we saw – the Amphitheatre – a four mile long, one mile high solid rock wall. Very hard to get a sense for its grandeur from a photo on a blog.



We decided to hike what is called The Gorge through the Royal Natal National Park since it is supposed to have the best views of the Amphitheatre and the Tugela Falls that plummet from it, the second highest waterfall in the world. It was awesome to set out up the canyon that morning. No one else was awake and the birds were singing their lungs out. About 30 minutes up the trail I had opened up a bit of distance on Mason when I noticed that the singing had changed. I stopped to look around and realized I was traversing a hill that was absolutely crawling with baboons. We had heard bad things about the baboons, that they could get quite pushy because hikers feed them, so I showed Mason what was going on and then kept moving. I only got a couple of pictures of them, none of them showing the entire hill. There must have been 20-30 baboons. This one was five or ten feet from us.



This is a shot I took of Mason shortly thereafter. Mason was absolutely awesome on this trip. It is so much fun to have a son old enough to go hiking with. I’m in heaven.



Here you can see how close we were to the Amphitheater, and that we had climbed up pretty high to get a bird’s eye view.



This is where we had come from.




This entire hike was a bit of an obstacle course. Much of it was very fun, like climbing ladders such as this up rock faces (not sure Katie would have been very comfortable with some of the stuff we climbed). However, there were also parts that were frustrating. In cowboy movies, the cowboys always ride down/up river a ways to so the Indian trackers “lose their scent”. This trail did the same thing with us. From time to time the trail would drop down to the rocky creek, where we’d be expected to hop from rock to rock up the creek until the trail comes out somewhere a few hundred meters upstream. I’m quite sure we never made it all the way to top of this trail, but we certainly gave it our best. We chased several forks and deadends and finally gave up. On the way out we lost our way (rock hopping again) and had to climb a few hundred meters up the side of the hill to regain the trail.



The next day we decided to head down into the “Central Drakensberg” area around Cathedral Peak and see if we could get all the way to the top. The drive there was really cool because we drove through myriad Zulu villages. Here’s a shot of one.



Here’s a series of shots that show you how long a hike we took to get to the top of the wall. The road at the bottom is where we started. I ended up summiting without Mason. Unfortunately he forgot to take a picture of me on top, so hetook this lame one of me with the summit in the background. You can see me climbing the final shoot.









It was a great trip. The scenery was beautiful, the exercise felt great, and most importantly, I had awesome company. I look forward to many more years hiking with Mason.

Sadness in Joburg

Jessica was supposed to go home yesterday but missed her flight. She didn't miss it today. We all miss her, but Brynley in particular has been difficult to console. She loves Jessica so much. Plus I think she felt like J was her last tie to Utah and she's now slipped through her fingers. Good luck, Jessica. Come back soon.

Kids' new blog

Check out the kids, now posting at blue-rhino.blogspot.com.

A Day of Victories

Today was a good day. Katie and Jessica are in Cape Town having a wonderful weekend away. "Didn't you have to work today?" you ask. As a matter of fact I did. The plus side of living life behind electric fence is that the kids can't get out. Mason, Brynley and Evie were in charge today. And everyone's ok. Huge victory #1.

My consolation was that I got to spoil them. So we went to McDonald's. What the heck. Molly crapped and Porter locked himself in the men's room and freaked himself out, but we made it ok. Victory #2.

After that I went to my client's house to watch rugby. He's a nice guy named Martin and he's British. So he had a bunch of South African friends over to watch South Africa vs. England. The kids behaved themselves very well. Everyone there was amazed by the six kids thing and couldn't stop talking about it. They also used some very colorful language to describe their thoughts on my intelligence relative to my wife, since I'm here with six kids and she's in Cape Town. But the kids were awesome and all were impressed. Huge victory #3.

Finally, South Africa beat England. Nay, they utterly crushed them. And England is the reigning champion. This is suddenly getting quite exciting to be in South Africa for the Rugby World Cup. There basically certainly the top seed from their group and look very, very strong. I'm now a huge Bryan Havana fan. He's a wing for the Springboks and is lightning fast. Very fun team to watch.

I've got the gang tomorrow all day long - the ladies come home late tomorrow night. We'll see if we venture out again or if we just chill and try to stay alive.

Oh the Places You'll Go

The other day Katie asked me to make a list of places I'd like to see while we're in South Africa. It struck me that most of the places I feel are "must see" are for the most part places I knew almost nothing about before I came to South Africa. Check out the great things there are to see. OK, so some of these images came out ridiculously big. Ugh. Oh well. This was my list:

Cape Town - colonial architecture, amazing geography, marine biology


Soweto - where the end of Apartheid "began", South Africa's most famous township


Drakensberg - the escarpment, one of 40 places Steve Davey, the British travel photographer, says you must see before you die


Victoria Falls - apparently makes Niagra seem like a silly trickle


The Lion King at Monte Casino - apparently a killer version of the Broadway musical (the girls are going tonight)


Ride an elephant - easily done locally


Pilanesberg - again

Kruger National Park - how about a park the size of England full of African animals?


Sossusvlei - also on Steve Davey's list



Okavango Delta - beauty in Botswana, just a bit north of here. Did I mention that between 40 and 60% of people in Botswana have HIV - very sad


Durban - think San Diego, but full of fourth generation Indians


Lesotho - the country inside our country. Actually we'll probably just see the escarpment


Swaziland - why not? It's so close.

Cubs win! Cubs win!

Twenty games to go. One game back. Dispel the curse! Bartman stay home! Please let this be the year!!

Black Mamba

The Bill Simmons fans out there will understand how excited I was that my least favorite two guard was apparently on display. Unfortunately there really was a snake behind the glass. A real snake, a poisonous one. Not the kind that does bad things in Colorado. Hard to be clear enough that this was the reptilian variety. Not the ball hog variety.

Good luck, Pete!

Our good friend Pete Malen will be running the Top of Utah marathon this coming weekend. We feel very sad not to be at the 13 mile point and the finish line to encourage and congratulate him. This is a big deal for him - his first complete marathon despite a lifetime of running.

Pete and Annette have been very kind to us. They invited us to run the Wasatchback Relay with them even though we are both much slower than each of them. Running with them became something to look forward to each summer while living in SLC. We trained to avoid embarrassment and got to enjoy 24 hours of their undivided attention.

The friendship we were able to create with their family in the short time we spent in Holladay was one of our most treasured. Their oldest son Carson was a particularly good friend to Mason. Every city needs a good sushi couple - and they were ours in SLC. We miss them a great deal from around the world and will be silently cheering them on this week. Run hard, Pete, run hard.

Go Springboks!

Mason and I got to inaugurate the first Rugby World Cup we've ever cared about this weekend. South Africa opened with a strong win over Samoa. The opening weekend also saw the hosts (France) lose to Argentina (I was watching replays for the Hand of God), the US lose (though well-fought) to defending champs England and our neighbors to the north, Namibia, lose a much closer than expected duel against Ireland.

Mason and I have no clue what's going on. We can spot a try and roughly understand a scrum. It kinda makes sense how a ruck works. But I never know whose ball it is when it goes out of bounds and penalties are a complete mystery. Like most sports, this is punctuated by Mason's incessant questions. "What was that penalty for?" "What does it mean he needs to roll away from the ball faster?" "Why does it seem like every time Samoa gets close to scoring the refs call a foul on them?" "Now whose ball is it?"

Except that in rugby my responses are different. Usually I give the most abbreviated reply possible so I can keep watching the game. With rugby I simply respond - "Mason, I have no clue." I need Tyler worse than I've ever needed him before.

My top questions would have to be:
With a nation full of enormous people, how did Samoa seem to field a team that was actually smaller than South Africa on average? Just the Samoans on the U football team would have been larger and stronger on average than these guys.
Speaking of small, does Ireland believe they get extra points for fielding a guy that looks like a jockey to always pull the ball from the ruck? I thought the runt was always the hooker, but I'm pretty sure the hooker is #2 and that runt was #6.
Why is it that no matter who throws the ball in, South Africa always gets it? Did Samoa forget to practice these?
How can you possibly miss a point after attempt, even from a tough angle? It's like watching Utah's special teams against BYU every time. Even more curiously, why tilt the ball away from the kicker's foot? Doesn't every kid in grade school know the ball's supposed to tilt toward the kicker?

More Animals Today

We went out this morning to a game reserve and got to get very close to some pretty cool animals. This is Mason when he comes home from Scout camp.

As soon as we got into the park, a whole pride of lions came walking up the road and walked right by our car. I literally could have reached out the window and touched them as they came by. Crazy.

We also got to see a pack of wild dogs. They were rather boring until someone gave a couple of them some meat and then the rest started fighting for it. Then a litter of pups came running out. My favorite part was when this group of them ripped the molding off the front of this car.

A bunch of zebras, rhinos, water buffaloes and other something or others.




Porter's impressed.


Jessica and kids got to play with baby tigers.





Then Mason and Jessica got to play with a cheetah.

If I had a million dollars

This week I very seriously thought about going out and buying Katie a green dress for our anniversary (though not a real green dress, that's cruel).

A song from way back in the dark ages by a Canadian band we're fans of says, "If I had a million dollars I'd by you a green dress". I certainly do not have a million dollars, but I got to feel like it the other day.

We have a pretty sizable chunk of change sitting in our bank account right now since we just sold our house and I haven't been able to get the proceeds moved into a higher interest bearing account until we pull it back out to put into a new house in Dallas. It's sizable, but nowhere near $1M.

However, the exchange rate here is 7 rands/dollar, so when I went to the ATM the other day to pull out R1000 ($130), the account balance on my receipt showed that we were well into the seven digits. Very exciting. I imagine this is what Europeans and Japanese feel like when they go to ATMs in US since the dollar is so weak.

It seems like a green dress is the least I could for Katie to celebrate. If nothing else, I'll at least make sure we eat even more mac & cheese with fancy dijon ketchup. Mmmmm. And since we're in Africa we should probably get a new pet - a llama or an emu.

Bedhead

Does anyone on earth get bedhead like Madi? It may look like she was trying to light the BBQ (the braai, as they say here), but it's just a good dose of the flu.

South African souvenirs

So far this is the only souvenir shopping I've done. I can't speak to the entire cocktail the kids are on right now, but so far I've been on seven different meds this week. I started with:

Antibiotic - twice a day
Post nasal drip undoer - twice a day
Expectorant - three times a day
Anti inflammatory - three times a day

Yesterday I felt even worse after trying this cocktail for two days. My mouth tasted like aluminum (we had Thai food for our anniversary and I ate several bites before I could taste anything but aluminum), my stomach felt like a steel drum, I gagged every time I swallowed and coughed and hadn't slept in two nights.

Apparently the cough syrup was making my heart race, which was why I couldn't sleep. Now I've been doubled up on the antibiotic and have to take the anti-inflammatory whether I want to or not (reduce the gagging from my inflamed throat) and have added:

Fizzy effervescent deals - three times a day (replace cough syrup)
Belly protector pills - offset the antiobiotics' effect on my stomach
Throat spray - any time my throat hurts lots

The kids have a good fistful of meds as well (and Katie and J). My cocktail is different than theirs - somehow I have a bacterial deal and theirs is viral. Go figure.

When I was a kid my grandparents would come to stay from time to time and I was always amazed at the pharmaceutical cocktail they'd take each morning - a technicolored wonderland. That's what this feels like. I hope we're about done with this and can concentrate on some real souvenirs.