lions during poker?

How many times in your life does a poker game get stopped due to the fact that there are lions roaring in the distance? That's what happened to us on saturday. It was the wildest, scariest and at the same time, obvious thing to happen when we camped at Khutse. earlier in the evening, after a 30 minute game drive, we stumbled upon 2 male and one female lion drinking from the watering hole that was about 2 kms. from our camp.. they were huge..... absolutely huge... and scary.. I was there for one night, Jacob was there for 2... It was a great camping experience, knowing you were not the big man on campus, and that there were lions, leopards, hyenas, wildcats living in the same environment. Just going out to look for wood for the fire was a invigorating experience...... Jacob and I had a nylon tent, and really didn't feel comfortable sleeping in our little tent, so we opted for the truck... I was going to keep the sun roof open for fresh air during the night, but someone told me that mambas can lift themselves off the ground and can crawl over the truck.. so I opted to sleep in the stale air of our truck.... Jacob shovel sledded across the salt pans and we played "capture the flag" in the bush... we were introduced to chakalaka sausage and I had a great mid afternoon shower in a bucket shower(picture shown) . Here's some photos from the trip.. mostly those of jake and his friends here...... The ones of the kids on the roof were during our "sundowner" by the watering hole.... we all had a drink and a snack and watched the sun go down near the watering hole, where 5 minutes later, we saw the lions drinking..
The ride there was absolutely surreal... you hit the last village(pictured) and the tar road turns to dirt.. for 2hours. Once you hit the game reserve.. it was 1.5 hours drive into the bush... there were no other groups camping within 20 miles of us.... One of the pictures is the dirt road to Khutse...... The other picture is of a squashed puff adder on the side of the road...
The experience is one we will always remember... Peeing our pants in the tent while Jacob and I woried whether what we heard and felt was the wind or a lion/hyena hitting our tent...

goodbye to Matt and hello to lions!

Matt leaves us today after a week or so. Hopefully his time here was a good one, it was great to have him here, sharing our experiences of screaming kids and bad food. He leaves today around noon.... 6 am your time..

Jacob is out in the bush already camping, i am headed out after I write this message. It's a bout a 5 hour drive, 2 hours of dirt roads. Looking forward to the experience. We are camping right out in the middle of it all.... Lions, hyenas, scorpions , snakes, etc..... You are required to have a lion proof tent... or so they say... We are going with a bunch of American families for a night out under the stars. Check out the blog for a few photos on late sunday or monday.. If for some reason the blog isn't updated in the next week or so, that means that my tent wasn't as well lion proofed as I first thought. Attached are a few photos from Matt's camera.... here's some great shots. I'll put a few more of his up next time as well.

Ok, headed out.. GO CARDS!!!!!! GO XU!!!

alot of lost golf balls..

After showing matt some of the local villages and African life, we took a morning and hung out in suburbia Botswana.. we went golfing at Phakalane about 30 minutes outside of the city.. http://www.phakalane.com/ . It feels just like some gross gated community in the U.S. Lots of huge homes, a great golf course, etc.. It was a great morning of golf, with the loss of a ton of golf balls. the problem with missing the fairways in Botswana is that if you hit it in the bush, there ain't no way you'd want to go search for it... lots of critters lurk, some of them are poisonous.. really poisonous.

Tonight we are taking matt to Mokolodi for a game drive and dinner at a great outdoor restaurant... http://www.mokolodi.com/ . Here's our wonderful president meeting who he thought was Snufulupogus from Sesame Street, when in fact it was a real elephant.. (joke) This happened at Mokolodi as well.

Hope all is well at home... the Cards come on at 3:30 this morning... so i'll see if i can stay up to see it. can anyone send me their DVR player ?

Go Cards

so far, so good.

Matt and I headed to gabane today to visit with my good friends at the chubuku stands and other areas of the village.. We met Bashi, OJ, Rosy, Alicia and all the crew.. they were in rare form, 3 sheets to the wind at 10 am. We did see a rare sight... the were slaughtering a cow right outside the butcher shop when we arrived. I didn't have the stomach to take close photos, but I think Matt got a few from a distance.. We visited with our friends at the pottery shop and are planning on quiz night at the bull and bush bar this evening... Tomorrow, I believe we head out to golf with the warthogs in Phakalane.

Here's a photo of Matt at a dusty bar in Odi..we had visited the Odi weavers and stopped at the "Take 2 bar"... they were playing some great music when we arrived, only to have it change to Maria Carey when we sat down to enjoy our beverages.... None the less, we had a nice visit with a few of the locals. And beers were a buck.

tuli block.

well. we all survived the weekend.. the trip to tuli was great.. Matt and Michelle commented on how well they were taken care of by their guide Abraham.... a true bushman.. Jacob is a font of information about hyenas, jackyls and baobab trees.. Today Matt and I will visit Odi to see the weavers and then who knows what. The weather is perfect... it's 8:30 am now... so it will get hot again today. But a few pics from their trip and here's a video for your pleasure.. not too excitingbut it give you a sense of the landscape... Matt has some great photos as well, and I'll post them when I get them.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKnPAhzOcEs A note on the photos... Giraffes, hyenas... and a huge baobab tree that is supposedly 3000 years old...Oh yeah and franny looking ragged as ever.

happy easter from Botswana

Well it's holiday time again, which means nothing but "Air Supply" and pot smoke in the air... Our neighbors are enjoying their day off of work...feel like I'm living next to a continuous grateful dead concert, but for some reason, all the hippie kids think that Air Supply is the music to get high to.

Anyway, holidays are a bit lonely around this joint(no pun intended), the city is deserted, busses were packed with people heading out of town and back to their home villages... There's obviously no family, and with Michelle, Matt and the 2 older kids on safari, I am sitting around watching the 3 little ones beat the hell out of each other... I've been enjoying watching a basketball game a night here for the past few days, and hope to catch a few more tonight..

Matt, Michelle and the kids seem to be living it up in Tuli Block...Apparently they have a local guide with them 24/7.. he even eats dinner with them.. I don't think the game viewing has been all that spectacular... no big game, just zebras, antelope, giraffes, etc.. but they have seen hyenas and Michelle just texted me and said they saw a cobra next to the pool they were swimming in... So, that's very cool!!!! I've been here for 6 months and am dying to see a snake, matt gets off the plane and one is swimming in the same pool with him.. Oh yeah,, Matt and Cathy, this is the pool we'll be going to when you come over...

As for me, I've watched 6 episodes of backyardigans and are playing checkers with Maura. Kind of missing home today... but looking forward to showing Matt the sites when they return from their trip to the bush..

OK, gotta go. maura and i are living it up with a new version of checkers... you can move anywhere and everywhere on each turn.. here's a few photos of animals... these are from chobe.

happy easter everyone... and GO CARDS! I shed a tear watching UK go down the other night.... did they have any business being there? Ouch

monkeys in the backyard

well, Matt Dixon is on his way over to visit.. should be here sometime around 7pm our time.. 1 pm yours.... We're looking forward to it.. Tomorrow they take off to Tuli Block to stay in a very cool place, surrounded by elephants, lions, wild dogs, etc. http://www.tulilodge.com/....
We feel like giving him no time to get used to the time change, might as well keep him busy as soon as he gets off the plane..
As Michelle was leaving for a jog this mornig she noticed Steven the security guard throwing rocks in our tree.. Apparently there were monkeys jumping from tree to tree and on our roof... Here's some video of them in our back yard, as well as the kids reactions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH-Uc_xVfdQ ..... Jude and Franny dug the two monkeys hanging out on our wall..
Michelle works today but just for a short time.. The rest of the city has shut down for the weekend due to the holiday...... It's literally a ghost town...
All for now... go cards!!!