MoGrath14

And so it ends. All we have left is a torturous 16 and a half hour flight from Johannesburg to JFK and then our vacation will have come to a conclusion. Since my last post Jason and I have gone on a few more safari excursions, both by land and by boat. On our last game drive yesterday morning we were fortunate enough to come across another carload of people whose guide had spotted a leopard. We had spoken with our driver at the start of the morning that we really wanted to see more lions and hopefully a leopard. We know that they can't guarantee that we will see anything but we were still hopeful we might get lucky and sure enough we did. When we came across the other driver who saw the leopard, ... read more

Jason and I safely made it to our lodge just outside Chobe National Park in Botswana on Tuesday. The internet at the lodge is too expensive so we've waited until today to go into town to an internet cafe to make a post. The internet is slow so I will keep this brief to post as many photos as I can. We've seen every animal we wanted to see while we were here, including lions. The lodge is beautiful and the food is phenomenal. We went to Zimbabwe to Victoria Falls yesterday and were unable to go swimming in the Devil's Pool but we did go rafting on the Zambezi River and it was awesome. I'm going to get to posting photos and I'll write more on Monday from the airport. The computer here wouldn't load ... read more

Today Jason and I went on a tour of Langa Township. I may have written a bit about this yesterday but a township is essentially an area set aside by the apartheid regime that was reserved specifically for a certain racial group to live in. The Langa township was one particular area established for the black population outside of Cape Town. It had one road that allowed people in or out. This was so the government could restrict the flow of people into or out of the township in the event of violence or anything else that the white apartheid government might not approve of. The township is approximately 400 hectares (don't ask for the conversion to acres... I don't know what it is) and originally was designed for 5,000 residents. Today the Langa township is ... read more

On Thursday Jason and I took a tour of the Western Cape winelands region. The Western Cape region has been producing wines for around 350 years. We visited three different wineries near the cities of Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, and Paarl. Our first winery was the Fairview winery. Here we got to sample 7 different wines as well as cheeses they produced that were paired with each wine. The winery was beautiful and had some funny looking goats outside that we got to watch. Our second winery was the Tokara winery. It is a much younger winery, having only been producing wines for about ten years. Here I sampled about 3 or 4 different types of wine as well as a brandy they make there. This winery had a beautiful view of the countryside and we were able ... read more

So originally I didn't think I was going to keep the blog while Jason and I were away in Africa but after seeing that the hotel has free access to their computers and I would be able to upload photos, I figured why not? So I'll do my best to hopefully post daily while I am here in Cape Town but I cannot guarantee the same once we get to Botswana. Our flight from JFK to Johannesburg was loooong. 15 hours 30 minutes in coach... not the most comfortable experience of my life. I've never experienced a sore butt like I did on that flight. Each seat had its own tv and we could choose from a huge list of movies, tv shows, video games and other things to keep ourselves entertained so it wasn't as ... read more

Our vacation has finally come to a close. We woke up Tuesday morning in La Crosse, Wisconsin and thought that depending on how the day went, we might try to drive home that day. We got on the road around 7:45AM and made our first stop outside of Chicago in Naperville, Illinois around noon for deep dish pizza. We had our pizza and it was pretty good although there is nothing better than a good thin crust pizza. After lunch we set our sights for home and kept driving. After about 1060 miles we made it home at about 3:15AM Tuesday night (Wednesday morning). It was a long day considering we drove all the way from the Mississippi River straight to home but it was nice to be able to relax today and not have to ... read more

I didn't have time to post anything yesterday because we were out late, but let me do a quick recap of the last two days for you. Yesterday we were still in South Dakota and we got up early to drive the Needles Highway, which is a scenic road throughout the Black Hills with some interesting rock formations along the way. After Needles Hwy we went to Mt. Rushmore and spent some time there staring at the mountain and going through the visitors center. It hasn't changed in 16 years (that's probably a good thing) but it was still very awe inspiring to be there and the weather was perfect. After leaving Mt. Rushmore we continued driving to Badlands National Park. Dad says we were there in 1993 but I don't remember it. Either way, I ... read more