We arrived in Oudtshoorn for the Rotary District Conference yesterday morning and the past 24 hours have been like a giant reunion! We’ve really enjoyed seeing so many of our previous hosts, other Rotarian friends and of course, our German GSE buddies. I’ve even surprised myself with remembering most of their names! However, I’m most looking forward to seeing the returning South African team that has been in Arizona while we have been here. They should be arriving soon.
Last night after the opening reception and mayoral welcome, we went off with folks from the Newlands Rotary Club for a braai back at their guest houses. The food was AMAZING of course and they even had a chocolate fountain for dessert! The Newlands club have nearly 30 people attending the conference. They are such a fun club and made us feel like we are really a part of them. A special “shout out” to Biffy for being one of our favorite people from our whole trip!
Morning came WAY too soon today after only a few hours of sleep last night. We were expected at breakfast at 7:30 and then transported to the conference site. After some more meeting and greeting this AM, the team (sans Randy who needed to be at the conference meetings today) took off for a café to do some more work on our presentation. We’ve got to summarize our experience in 15 minutes! However, I think we have developed a great tribute to our hosts that shares a good overview of our trip. I’m looking forward to giving our presentation on Sunday. Today we’ll watch the German GSE teams (both incoming and outgoing) give their presentations. I’m looking forward to see how they express their experience as well.
Tonight will be the District Governor’s party which has a “Black & White” theme. We’re supposed to come in “costume.” We didn’t really know about this party before we packed for this trip, but I think we’ll manage to pull something fashionable together from the limited contents of our suitcases. J
After our presentation tomorrow, we’ll be heading back to Cape Town for our final night in South Africa. And then we’ll begin our approximately 36 hour journey home. It will be comforting to be back in familiar surroundings, but I think I speak for all of us that we will return home changed. We have seen and done so much in four short weeks. It will be difficult to share and summarize this experience with our friends and family when we return. But I hope that this blog will have provided a small glimpse into this amazing journey and appreciate everyone who cared enough to follow along and share a part of it with me.
As you might have guessed, I've been having trouble getting a good internet connection for the past week or so. It seems like since we left the Cape Town area, most people we've stayed with have only had a dial-up internet connection.
So to catch up a bit, we arrived here in Beaufort West on May 5th. Beaufort West is located in the Karoo Desert area of the Western Cape and looks quite a bit like our area of Arizona. It is much more arid and the landscape is rough and rugged like at home. We arrived here after driving through the Swartberg Pass, a twisty and winding UNPAVED road that took us over and through the mountains. It was a little scary for those of us with a fear of heights!
Since we arrived on Cinco de Mayo, we decided to share a little bit of this celebration with the Beaufort West Rotary Club. I mixed up a little "homemade" salsa using the salsa seasoning mix I brought with me to give as gifts and we bought Doritos since we couldn't find regular tortilla chips. However, the biggest hit of all was the bottle of tequila and limes we bought and used to teach the Rotarians a little Mexican toast as we all did tequila shots together! They loved it!
Early the next morning (we were picked up at our hosts at 6:00 am) we went to the Karoo National Park to do a game drive. It was a bit brisk as we loaded into our open jeep before sunrise to drive through the desert to spot a variety of wildlife including wild zebra, mountain zebra, springbok, oryx (also known as gemsbok), baboons, ostrich, kudo and a few other animals I can't remember right now. It was a great experience and the scenery was beautiful.
In the afternoon, the whole team moved out to a sheep farm to spend the night. Our hosts Andre and Pam were very gracious and accomodating. In the evening they took us to a local sporting field to observe and participate in a popular recreational past-time, the sport of "bowls." This game is a bit like bocce ball, where a player rolls a small ball or marker (called a jack) and then everyone else rolls their balls to see who can get closest. We had a lot of laughs and our instructors were very patient with us as we tried to get the hang of the subtleties of the game. I took some funny video.
We went back to the farm house to sleep and in the morning we were off to explore the sheep farm. We loaded up in the back of a pick-up and spent about four hours driving through the veldt spotting cattle, sheep, springbok and a few other antelope type animals. This farm is also a game lodge where hunters come to shoot the springboks. We drove around to pick up all the dead animals and they were loaded into the trailer we towed behind the truck. It was a great morning. The weather was spectacular, the landscape really beautiful, and of course we had lots of good laughs along the way.
This evening we'll be back together with the Rotarians for another dinner party. This is a very young Rotary Club with several members about our age, so it has been especially fun for us.
In the morning we'll be leaving here early (6:00 AM pick-up again!) to drive to Oudtshoorn for the Rotary District Conference. We'll spend about 2 1/2 days there, where I think we are scheduled to visit an ostrich farm (where we might even get to ride them!) and the famous Cango Caves. We'll also be giving a presentation to the Rotarians about our visit and our impressions of South Africa.
I can't believe our trip has nearly come to an end. It has been a truly unbelievable, onece-in-a-lifetime opportunity that has met and exceeded every expectation I had for this trip. I'm not sure when I'll get to post again, but I will definitely try when I get the chance. In the meantime, if you haven't been checking out BJ's photos on the Photobucket site, I think he has been updating it regularly. The link is somewhere on his blog.
May 1
I can’t believe it is May 1st and we left Arizona three weeks ago. In some ways it seems like we’ve been here for ages, and at the same time it feels as if we just arrived. A couple of days have passed since my last blog. We moved out of our “group home” in Hermanus and spent two nights there with host families. Barb and I were hosted together in the beautiful home of Metcalf and Carina Fick. We spent yesterday morning visiting a really nice, small private school and I got to observe a first grade class (the same age as Quincy) and the afternoon at an abalone farm where we saw abalone being bred, grown, harvested and canned. And then last night we presented to the Hermanus Rotary Club. BJ, Sarah and Barb went out to a pub after the meeting with a couple of the Rotarians, but I was anxious to get home and get in bed!
We left Hermanus this morning and were taken by a couple of our hosts about two hours to Swellendam, where we met up with a few of the local Rotarians who hosted a really nice lunch for us. The Swellendam Rotary President, Paula ?, prepared a HUGE meal for about 12 of us in her home. It is amazing that she went to all that trouble and we only spent about 2 hours in Swellendam. We were met in Swellendam by a Rotarian from George who picked us up and transported us for another 2 hours or so to George.
Barb and I are again being hosted together with a family (Ralph, Lynn and Lauren Tarr) that lives about 20 minutes outside of George in a little village called Wilderness. It looks pretty much like it sounds! We are in a beautiful home with amazing views of the rolling hills and valleys. We’ll be here for 4 nights. We don’t have a good internet connection here, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to post this.
May 3 - South African Idol
I’m enjoying a special South African cultural phenomenon tonight: the final results night of South African “Idols”, the local version of our American Idol. My host family is just as into their Idols as we are in my house. The last two contestants are a a rocker guy named Jason and an urban pop girl named Sasha Lee. It is so funny to see this show in the exact same format as our American Idol (same theme music, graphics, judging process, etc.) but with a distinctly South African flavor. They are about to announce the results. For the record, my choice is Jason. Stay tuned for the winner. (It is Sasha Lee. Oh well. I guess I should have voted.)
We had a GREAT day today! We were driven halfway to Knysna, where we were met by a Rotarian from the Knysna Rotary Club who would be our guide for the day. Mike Mills was a great guy who had been a GSE team leader to Dallas a couple of years ago. He had a very good insight into what we were interested in doing (and NOT doing!) and we didn’t visit a SINGLE museum today! We met up with a group of other fun Rotarians (including the District Governor Elwin and his wife Ena) for coffee and then headed out to take in some of the local sights. We enjoyed a great and leisurely lunch at a seaside restaurant where we all laughed together as if we had known each other for years. The weather was spectacular today which made it all that much more enjoyable. All in all it was a very fun and relaxing day. Thank you Knysna Rotarians!
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