Day 21, Year 6 Rainy, Rainy Sunday
Date: Sunday, November 14, 2010
Weather: Overcast and Rainy Over Night and All Day
Location: Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richards Bay, South Africa
We are definitely in the wrong part of South Africa at this time of year. If we were in Cape Town we wouldn’t be in the rainy season, but here the rains begin in October and continues on into March with February and March being the wettest months. So I guess we’ll just have to settle into this drippy world. We should have some sunshine tomorrow and again on Thursday, but rain is forecast for Tuesday, Wednesday, and maybe Friday. I need to do some varnishing but that’s going to be tough to do here. On the few sunny days we want to do more inland touring, so varnishing just might have to wait. We once again spent most of today planning our trip to Kruger National Park next week. Because Kruger is so huge and because you have to make reservations ahead of time, you really need to know where you want to go. After eight hours of research since returning from Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, we finally figured it out, invited Ed and Lynne to come over to go over the plans and make final decisions, and then we got online and booked our accommodations. We didn’t get everything we wanted as many accommodations were already booked, but we think we have decent accommodations and a good basic plan. We will be leaving here EARLY next Sunday morning, driving north through Swaziland which is a separate little country within South Africa, and should be in the southern part of the park by early afternoon. We will spend four nights in the park and another night in the little town of Graskop at the base of the Blyde River Canyon. This will be on Friday when we exit the park and head south. So that takes care of next week. If Thursday of this week is really sunny, we hope to drive back north to the iSamangaliso Wetland Park to see hippos, birds, and crocodiles.
Tonight I talked to my sister Patsy and then we called Justin, Jo, and Ziggy on Skype video. Ziggy has a little library corner and he sat and read books to us and he played the xylophone like a piano with great enthusiasm. He was playing with a little plastic duck and saying “quack, quack” and we happen to have an almost identical plastic duck on Windbird. So Mark grabbed that and Ziggy got the greatest kick out of seeing a duck like his on the monitor. So we had a great time watching Ziggy and finding ways to communicate with him. So between our call to Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah yesterday and Justin, Jo, and Ziggy today, we have had our weekly Skype video hit. We will not get to talk to them next weekend as we will be attending a Zulu dance competition all day on Saturday and will be leaving for Kruger early Sunday. So we’ll really look forward to seeing those grandbabies on the weekend after returning from Kruger and I think we’ll have lots of exciting things to tell them about.
