Easy days 29 & 30 August

On Monday, I had the pleasure of watching Nicolas at his field hockey practice at school. At lt, warm-ups, at rt hitting the ball over 2 cones, below a big swing!!

 30 August, Jannie and I had to do errands at a humongous new mall, and I could not pass up doing some odd shots!! These utensils hang above tables in the food court. I don't know if the picture at the right is of ice cream or gellato,
                                         but it was artfully swirled &
begged for my camera!


 At bottom right are fronds of  the breadfruit tree in Lorraine's front yard. I just liked the way the light
         came through.

Jillian told me that a single click on any picture will enlarge it, and clicking on the back arrow at upper left will reduce again.

Playing Catch up due to computer probs

First of all, an apology for the odd way the blog breaks up words in odd places! I assure you I would not do that on purpose!!
Secondly, the Panorama Trip was on the 26th, and I have added two pix from that great day. On the left is the fab banana-cinnamon crepe with ice cream and caramel sauce. On the right is English group that

shared the day and helped me over some rocks and slippery spots.

On Saturday, the 27th, Cedar (Lor's dau) took me to the local butcher to get some "Biltong", a traditional dried beef somewhat like jerky except wider. They also had biltong made from game meat, but it was drier and hard. The 3rd pic is of many kinds of rolled sausage made from....well, maybe I don't want to know!!

I had mentioned earlier that Lorraine, Nicholas, and I drove to Sabie on the 28th to visit the curio shop and to have pancakes (this could be habit-forming!). Below left is an overview of the shop from a balcony. Below ctr is a huge rock painted like a turtle. At rt is a new soccer stadium built for the World Cup in
Nelspruit. It may be zoomed too much to tell the support are orange giraffes!

I was again unsuccessful at putting these two pictures in the proper place, but I have given up!

 When I actually publish this, who can guess where they might be.

No Power--no news

 Today was a local day of driving to a small town with a great gift and curio shop. Shopping was followed by pancakes (I could really get used to them) and then back home. We don't cook much here--had KFC. And the power went out in this whole neighborhood 30 minutes ago, so I am running by battery. Therefore, I will make this short and not post any pictures today. Stay tuned, though, because there will be some interesting excursions coming up.  As it is only 8:30 PM and too early for bed, I will read for a while by candlelight and pretend I am a pioneer.  TTFN from SA,  Carol

The Panorama Route All Day Tour

What a fabulous day for a van tour north of Nelspruit! Looking at the website about the Panorama Route did not prepare me for the beauty we encountered today. We first drove through miles of eucalyptus trees, pines, bananas, and other fruit trees.
Steven made a special trip to Nelspruit
to get me in this van, then drove north to Hazy View to get 2 English couples, so the 6 of us spent all day together--saw wonderful sights, learned a lot and laughed a lot.

These are banana trees with plastic bags over each bunch of bananas to protect them from bugs and to allow them to ripen gently.

Our first stop was at the lovely Lone Creek waterfall. In my rush to leave the house, I had forgotten to change from my Switch Flops to more appropriate shoes for hiking, but Steven and Pete (one of the British guys) helped me navigate the parts of the path that were slippery from the mist.

         Lisbon Falls could not be seen from the road, but we walked between two long sheds of items for sale by locals, & Voila! There they were!


The Blyde (pron. Blade) River Canyon is a gorgeous National Preserve somewhat like our Grand Canyon but much more green & beautiful. This is the overlook for the Three Rondavels, which are shaped like native round huts.


Our next stop was by far the most amazing. Bourke's Luck Potholes were created millenia ago as the river carved its way through the soft rock of the canyon. The rolling action of the boulders dug holes and pools into the rock.

From the approaching path, we began to see the rounded edges of the canyon. Then the potholes came into sight, and what a sight they were!! There are 2 bridges which cross the chasm and offer great photo ops.

At upper left, you can see my shadow on the bridge. Steven was wonderful about offering to take my picture at each site.
In fact, he didn't offer--he just
took the camera from me! He was really a great guide!
The lower left picture faces upstream from the Potholes.

We capped off our day by having fabulous pancakes, which are actually crepes which can be ordered with different fillings rolled up in them. I had cinnamon and banana with a caramel sauce and ice cream on the side--completely low-cal!!That's all for now. I hope you are enjoying my efforts at blogging. This one went more easily for me, so the pix are in their proper places!

Lazy Day

Today was a day of rest, as Lorraine has to be in Johannesburg (Joburg) overnight for business. So there are no pictures for me to mess up. Tomorrow's plan is for a tour of the Panorama Route north of Nelspruit. I am sure I will have more photos than I know what to do with, as the entire area is a photographer's paradise.
     I will try to correct my blogging problems by tomorrow I hope.

Chimp Eden Rescue & Rehab Center

I have worked on this for 3 hours and cannot get the photos in their proper positions, but I will just work with what I have. After getting Nicolas from school at 1:15 today, we drove south to Chimp Eden. There are 3 large fenced areas which contain chimps of different ages.

The young woman who led our tour knew the name

 and personality characteristics of every chimp.

As she stopped us at each enclosure, she tossed orange sections & macadamia nuts to every animal as she described its age and place in the hierarchy. Most of them would make good outfielders for a baseball team--they rarely missed catching the food. I tried very hard to have all of the chimp pix together, followed by the impalas, kudus, and other large antelopes; but the computer had a mind of its own and would not play by my rules. Maybe it didn't appreciate some of the names I called it!!!

Although this is the end of winter here, the sun was quite hot and there was not much shade, but I really enjoyed our visit here in spite of all my protective clothing. After finishing the organized tour, we spotted animals in the fields and near the dam. Most of the pix below were made then. Apparently there are also giraffes and zebras on the preserve, but we did not spot any (or stripe any either!).

Again, I apologize for the disorganization!   Rick told me by email that if you click on a picture (or is it double click?), it will enlarge so you can see it better.    Before returning to the car, we had a snack in the cafe.

The placemats are made of stone and are very attractive. At least you don't have to worry about them blowing away     when it is windy! At lower left, in case you are wondering, is a closeup of the chocolate milkshake Nicolas ordered.