Category: Uncategorized

March 4-5

We begrudgingly left Cape Town and continued on to our next big sight: Victoria Falls! With just 4ish days in the area, we were getting a lot of country bang for our buck. We flew into Zambia, drove over the border to Zimbabwe and then spent some time on a day trip to Botswana. So three countries, four days, but could do them all without packing our bags any additional times.

When we arrived in Zambia, we did our usual visa dance: walk up to customs, they ask if we got our visa in advance, we say no, they deep sigh and tell us how much it costs, we tell them we don’t have any cash, they tell us we can pay in USD, we tell them we don’t have any USD, they deep sigh again, we ask if we can use credit card, they deep sigh and say the machine isn’t working well (or they don’t take it at all), they try to run the card, it doesn’t work, they try again, it doesn’t work. At this point, either Michael tries to convince them to let him go out past customs to an ATM or the card magically works on the third try. I don’t remember what happened in Zambia… most of our customs experiences are starting to blur together. Not all of them – we had an extra special experience two days later in Botswana.

After leaving the airport, we needed a taxi to our hotel. We had picked up some local Zambia currency, kwacha, (the only currency available at the airport) and went out to see what the drivers had to offer. Good news: there were taxis. Bad news: they only take you to the border. Then you have to get a second taxi. So that’s what we did and that’s when things got a tiny bit messy. We got out of Zambia customs, and were told it was about a mile and a half to the Zimbabwe customs. So really we were going to need 3 taxis to get this job done. We had been told that we couldn’t use kwacha for Zimbabwe taxis, so we changed it all except for the 20 kwacha we needed to get to the next customs stop. We asked around and were told it was going to be 40 kwacha to go that mile. Nope. So we started walking. And it started raining. Michael was about ready to cave and go back when our taxi driver pulled up behind us. 20 kwacha it was. We don’t usually feel like we win when negotiating with taxis. But that felt like a win to me. Another round of customs, another taxi and we were at our hotel for the next couple of days.

It wasn’t terribly late, but we were exhausted, so we hung out at the hotel, had dinner and went to bed early.

The next day we went white water rafting on the great Zambezi river. I had been looking for a chance for us to go white water rafting over the past couple of months and it had never worked out. I hadn’t been since our honeymoon in Costa Rica and Michael since a bachelor party in Denver. We were due. Plus how cool is it to go white water rafting on the river that feeds Victoria Falls!?!

The Zambezi River is Africa’s fourth longest river (2,693 kilometers) after the Nile, Congo and Niger. Here’s a video of a stretch we were rafting on:

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/img_7771.mov

Just kidding! That was right at the base of the falls and we did not raft on that. We rafted a few miles down the river once things had calmed down a bit.

The day started at 7am and involved a lot of work to get on the water. About an hour and a half of driving, an hour of waiting, and a 20 minute challenging hike down the gorge to get to the water. But then we were on the water and it was great! It wasn’t the best rapids – 2s and a few 3s (one of which they called a 5). But it was still great being out there. The river was beautiful and the water was a great temperature. No pics since we couldn’t bring ourselves to pay the 45 bucks for their photos.

We got back to the hotel early afternoon and were going to head out to see the falls, but we were so tired. We napped a few hours and then headed into town for a quick dinner. While in town we found the place where they do cage diving with Crocodiles. This is a thing apparently. It sounds stupid and dangerous to me. It sounded more stupid when we found out that it’s just some crocs that they keep in a tank. This tank was just the size of a small pool next to a bar. No thank you.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Frank Zappa that I liked a ton that was on the wall from the brewery we had dinner at:

“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”

March 2-3

Sorry for so many posts all together. Michael and I had a four hour road trip today when I could type out the posts and now my wifi is killing it in our AirBNB, so I’m just cranking them all out. When it rains it pours! Back to wine country.

Stellenbosch Hills – Started our day with a biltong/wine pairing. Biltong is just jerky, but the interesting thing about biltong in South Africa is the odd varieties of biltong: ostrich, beef, springbok, kudu. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of jerky, but the kudu and the beef drywors (no clue what that means) were both delicious and the wine pairings were interesting. The guys, being bigger jerky fans, really enjoyed it.

Raats – Here we had this local college student pouring the tasting. In my mind he was the most interesting thing about this winery. He is a buddy of the winemaker’s son, was very charismatic, apparently doesn’t go to class but still gets A’s and sold both the wine and the family really well. He made the tasting a lot of fun. We liked all of the wines, but one thing to note is that the last wine we tasted is used as a pairing at Eleven Madison Park in NYC which is one of the top restaurants in the world.

Jordan – we had a tasting scheduled here, but needed lunch, so we switched to having lunch at their bistro instead. The food was great, beautiful setting and we enjoyed the wines as well.

Maryanne – this was my “I’m super tired from drinking wine all day” espresso stop. After I got that out of the way, there were some great wines, but the best thing about this winery is that the four of us had some notably good conversation on a wide variety of topics that would normally get people heated. But no one got heated – it was just great conversation.

Asara – we did dinner here with wine. Asara was one of our favorites from the last time we were in Stellenbosch and we loved it. A lot. So we were a little nervous about coming back, but it did not disappoint. The food was incredible and the wines held up again. We started off with their white cabernet which was delicious. Michael had a glass of Cape Fusion, delicious. Bell Tower, spot on. Avondale, incredible.

It was really wonderful being back at Asara. We looked into staying there for our one night in Stellenbosch but it was too expensive. Next time, for sure.

Day 2

Stark Conde – this was a great way to start off our last day in wine country. They had a great outdoor space set up for breakfast, but we headed inside to the barrel room for a tasting. The woman who poured our tasting was really knowledgeable and was a huge value add to the tasting. The wines were delicious but what I liked was that their cheapest Sauv Blanc was my favorite of their whole list. I think it ended up costing like 6 or 7 bucks. That’s a case that I would have liked to take home if we were heading back to the states now.

Waterford – Another favorite from our last visit. Phil and Krystal had recommended the Jem to us, so last visit we did a wine and chocolate pairing and had a glass of the Jem. Obsessed. This made us pumped to go back.

This time we did the reserve tasting: we had the 2009 Chardonnay, the 2006 Jem and the Kevin Arnold 2005 Shiraz and 2006 Cab Sauv. Reminder that if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We should have done a chocolate tasting and a glass of the Jem. All four of the wines were good, but none were amazing. The 2006 Cab Sauv was Michael’s favorite. Probably mine too. Next time: glass of Jem and chocolate and wine pairing.

Waterkloof – Last time we went to Waterkloof, we had an incredible lunch and did a Merlot tasting that compared the 2006 to the 2009. It resulted in us buying 3 bottles of each – both were really really good. Popping back in here, we couldn’t do lunch, so we did a tasting with a cheese and bread platter.

The wines were good, but not as good as last time. We are thinking they may have grown a little too big or something. Or perhaps they’re selling more, so the wines they gave us are newer than what we had relative to the last visit. We’re not sure, but the best thing from that tasting (and the only thing that Vanessa bought) was the mango chutney that they had on the cheese plate and that was sold at the deli down the street.

So after having such an amazing trip to Cape Town last visit, we were worried that it wouldn’t hold up to what we remembered. It definitely did! Things changed and some things weren’t as good as we remembered, or had changed (as things do). But for everything that was slightly less good, we found 3 new things that were incredible. Sorry for my over use of the word delicious. I know it’s a boring word that does not properly describe what we were eating and drinking, but short of taking notes as we’re tasting (which I refuse to do), you all get either a “delicious” or a “meh” as my main descriptor.

We still love Cape Town and it is still our favorite city in the world. If it was closer to family, we’d probably move here, but the distance is too much. So, we’ll see you soon, Cape Town! Thanks for still being wonderful!

February 28 – March 1

Before getting out to wine country, there was still one thing that we hadn’t done in Cape Town yet. We hadn’t been able to get down to Cape of Good Hope. So we woke up super early, packed up all our stuff, left the AirBNB around 5am and headed around the cape. Our goal was to catch Cape of Good Hope for sunrise. Huge success.

This is Cape Point which you can see from Cape of Good Hope

We also got to see these animals – we weren’t totally sure what kind of bok they were, but since Jeff and Vanessa hadn’t seen many animals and weren’t going to have time for safari, every animal that we saw made me excited for them.

We also got an up close view of some ostriches!

Then off to a really cutesy bakery, Schoon, for some breakfast. It was my first flat white which I had heard a bunch about (and was delicious) and it was Michael’s first… whatever this was…

They called it hot chocolate, but it was really just hot milk with a slab of ganache on the glass. Points for creativity, but Michael was excited and took a huge bite of the ganache up front which meant the rest of it wasn’t that chocolatey. User error.

After Schoon, it was off to Paarl to see the Spice Route. This had been recommended to us by one of Vanessa’s friends and sounded awesome. It was a winery/distillery/brewery/chocolatier/glass blowing/pizzeria/bbq/coffee shop all smooshed into one. Definitely a great way to start wine country. The wine wasn’t the best, but the space was great and we loved popping into the brewery and doing some gin tasting. Gin… not my favorite. But they also had a handful of other grain alcohols that I could definitely get behind.

Also it was fun doing a local beer tasting:

After the Spice Route, we headed to the AirBNB in Franschhoek to drop off our stuff and the car. We had struggled with a decision to hire a driver or go with Ubers and taxis. The driver was expensive, but we weren’t sure how reliable the Uber situation was. After doing some online research, we decided to go with Ubers. I’m not sure I’d call it a mistake, but we struggled finding Ubers in Franschhoek. We basically ended up using a Taxi service for 60% of the time and they sent us the same guy, Michael, every time. I’m sure he was sick of us by the end of our two days in Franschhoek.

Again, I’ll try not to bore you too much, but here are a few notes on the wineries and restaurants we hit up in Franschhoek… more for my memory than anything else.

Day 1

Holden Manz – we sat outside, the wines were very good. Nothing else to say. No pictures.

Boschendal – we had dinner here. They also do wine tastings, but we just incorporated that into our dinner. The food was good, but the best part was sitting outside over the garden and seeing sunset.

Day 2

Moreson – really nice outdoor seating, the wines were great and we bought a bunch of charcuterie there. Apparently they do a 2 day course in how to make charcuterie. Michael was super bummed that we didn’t have time to do that.

I mean – I’m pretty sure I could sell this photo to a magazine or something. Where did that random wind come from to gently blow Vanessa’s hair?

And then us looking a bit less glamorous:

Here’s Jeffrey holding some of that charcuterie… note how happy he is to have his picture taken:

GlenWood – we really enjoyed sitting outside and their white wines. Their Chardonnay was delicious and their Sauv Blanc/Semillon was also great. The tasting guy was a bit strange and spent a surprising amount of time criticizing straight Sauvignon Blancs.

Haut Espoir – they had an incredible view of elephant mountain and great artwork on their wine. Plus their 2011 Shiraz was one of Michael’s favorites. Here is a picture of the mountain and of the label. See if you can see the elephants in both:

Hint: rear to the left, head to the right.

Stony Brook – Ghost Gum Cabernet was delicious. They have a Chicago distributer. We sat outside with their two dogs and a table of Swedish people were buying and opening some of the crazy expensive stuff, so we got to have a few tastes that were a bit out of our price range.

Le Lude – Like the majority of wine producers, wineries in South Africa cannot call their sparkling wines “Champagne”. They call it MCC which stands for Methode Cap Classique. Le Lude had great MCCs, but there are two important things to point out about this stop.

1. It was only a few blocks from our AirBNB, so we walked, but once we got there, there was another half mile or mile to get to the tasting room of the main road. We weren’t expecting the additional distance and we were trying to get a tasting right before they closed. We were pretty worried we were not going to make it, which resulted in Michael sprinting to the tasting room to ensure we got in. His performance was incredible and we got our tasting.

2. Once in, they did a tasting of their Chardonnay MCC and their Pinot Noir MCC (the rose sparkling). Both were great. Then they poured us a glass of really bad Champagne. Like 7 buck stuff. It was horrible. I think their point was to show that their stuff is better than some Champagne, but the point fell flat. Maybe they could have said something about why they were giving us crap Champagne. Was it the same price range? How did it compare? No clue. It was bad and their stuff was better. It was a strange tasting.

Chef’s Warehouse at Maison – Tapas style dinner – super delicious. I think all of us are happy that there are no pictures. A lot of wine for just one day…

Some of you may have heard that Cape Town has some major water issues… as in… they’re out of it.

After four years of drought, the water supply for the city has almost run out. The reservoir is almost empty. So at some point, the city will have to stop supplying water to homes and businesses. What does this mean for our visit? It didn’t affect us too much to be honest. At our first AirBNB, the owner asked that we take showers that were 90 seconds or shorter. Not a problem! Navy shower. Turn the water on, get wet, turn the water off, soap up, rinse off. We also had a bucket to collect shower water that we could use to flush the toilet. Besides showers, one suggestion was to only flush when necessary. Brown, flush it down. Also not hard to do. In many of the restaurants and public restrooms, the faucets were turned off completely and replaced with hand sanitizer. Finally, all drinking water that we had was bottled.

What did we learn from this experience? A ton. They estimate that if you run the water when you brush your teeth, you are wasting a gallon of water. Every flush of the toilet was labeled as 9 liters of water. Now, I know that this varies from toilet to toilet, but I can tell you that the amount of water in the bowl here was much lower than the amount that we keep in the bowls (on average) in the states. The biggest surprise to me was the showers. Even a super quick, less than 90 second, shower was filling a huge bucket (perhaps 2.5 gallons) and then some. That’s a shower where we were really trying our best to conserve. Imagine a leisurely shower!

I’m sure locals were doing a lot more than we were doing, but we tried to help as much as we could. The work that locals have been doing to conserve has really helped. The date that the city was expected to run out was originally April 1st, but that has now been pushed back because of how careful people have been. They’re also working on building systems to convert salt water to fresh, but won’t have that ready in time.

This is an issue that other cities are going to start having around the world. Neither Michael nor I can remember the details of this anecdote, but we’ve heard of wealthy people buying up land specifically because it has fresh water on it in preparation for when it becomes a scarce commodity. I know we are leisurely with water in the States or most places around the world (excluding Northern California), but it’s something we should probably be worried about.

Final thought: as with most issues regarding natural resources, it’s the poor who will be affected by this in Cape Town. We had no problem buying water for all of our needs and still using our 50 liters/day for showering and such. I’m sure there are many people who are being hit very hard by this and more so in the future.

On that sad note.. on to wine country!

February 26-27

Some of you have heard stories about our issues with Table Mountain the last time we were in South Africa. The hike was not ideal. We didn’t plan for it properly and as such, it was horrible. No water, no sunscreen and we weren’t feeling well going into the trip. We got to the top, but it was awful.

This time around, Mike was calling this hike my redemption hike. So let’s see how we did…

Not bad to be honest. It was still really hard, but we were more prepared. And as such, we got to actually enjoy the views when we got to the top.

And then this picture of us making fun of other tourists. Kids at home… it’s not nice to make fun of other people, but if you’re going to, make sure just make sure they are in the dark about it.

And one picture to show how far we’d climbed… we started at the base of the cable car:

We also had some decent beach time in Camps Bay, where we were staying. This is me being paparazzi while Michael and Vanessa walked out to the water:

Creepy, but nice shots, right?

And we had a delicious dinner at Victoria & Alfred Waterfront with our buddy from Antartica, Keith, and his girlfriend, Leah.

It was a super fun surprise that they were in time at the same time (read: we forgot he said he was going to be here at this time and we changed our dates to coincide with his). Leah, a medical student who was volunteering in Africa, may not have been that impressed with our antics, but she put on a good face for us.

Here’s Jeff and Vanessa with the only rhinos they are going to see on this trip:

The next day was another relaxing day with beach, beers, good food and massages for me and Vanessa. Great way to end our time in Camps Bay before heading to wine country.

February 23-25

We got into Cape Town late on Friday night after a short layover in Johannesburg. Before we were through customs in Johannesburg we were already feeling good. South Africa, at least the parts we’ve been to (Cape Town, wine country, Jburg airport), feel like a city in the US or Western Europe. And after four months in South America and Africa, we were excited to be in an “easy” country again. Uber, English speakers, safe enough for me to go on solo runs, data/cell service inclusive in our phone plans, lots of activity and options. Now many countries had one or two of these luxuries, but South Africa has all of these and more.

Michael and I visited Cape Town a little over five years ago and just loved it back then. Since, we have often said it is our favorite place to travel. But putting so much pressure on a location, I was worried that the second time around wasn’t going to meet expectations. I now know there was nothing to be worried about.

We got in Friday night, rented a car and drove out to Camps Bay to our AirBNB home for the next 5 days. The host was waiting and the check in was easy. We couldn’t tell this in the dark, but out the front door of the apartment you can see Table Mountain and out the back porch you can see the beach!

Our friends Jeff and Vanessa flew in early the next morning, so we went to the airport to grab them. It has been about a month and a half since we had Phil and Krystal in town, so we were pumped for more visitors! We spent a few minutes letting them get settled into the apartment before we headed off for their first South African adventure.

We started in town at the Old Biscuit Mill. The area is a renovated biscuit mill (hence…) that has restaurants and stores with local artisans and designers selling their stuff. But then on Saturdays, in the space right next to the full time shops, there is a huge market with a ton of different food stalls. A lot of people come out to listen to music, eat delicious food and enjoy each other’s company. Besides eating all of the food and having a few glasses of bubbly, we got roped into a bit of shopping.

These are huge pots of paella:

The Old Biscuit Mill is also home to Test Kitchen, one of the best restaurants in the world. In order to get reservations you have to do something crazy like get online at 12:01 on the day the times are released or you can’t get a table. We didn’t do that, so we just got a nice view of the outside.

But we were just pretty happy to be enjoying everything else the area had to offer.

Saturday night we hiked Lion’s Head to see the sunset. The hike is challenging, but great because it’s (mostly) safe to do in the dark. Plus it has amazing 360 views of the city.

Sunday was another big day of exciting plans… plus it was Michael’s birthday! We had a quick lunch at La Colombe… just kidding. It was four hours. Four hours. Possibly the longest lunch of my life, but we just really enjoyed sitting and relaxing through all of it. Springbok and scallops and prawns and lobster and quail eggs and all kinds of local veggies and fruits and sauces and mmmmm it was all delicious.

Seriously, can you think of a more clever way to display the seared tuna dish?

And then this palate cleanser… because obviously you need your palate cleanser to come out in a cloud of fog:

Afterwards we were planning on hiking Cape Point, but we didn’t have enough time, so instead we grabbed some groceries and barbecued back at the apartment. That’s right… all we did all day is eat. But I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how Michael wanted it.

We still have another 5 days here, so lots more to report! More coming soon!

Feb 16-Feb 23

We flew into Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, around 4am Friday morning. It’s the worst kind of overnight flight, departing Nairobi around 11pm, not long enough for sleep to add much value. Plus we had about 14 hours in the Nairobi airport, so by the time we got through customs and got shuttled off to our hotel we were destroyed. A few hours and some showers later and we were out to explore Antananarivo. We learned very quickly how poor Madagascar is. Really poor. The top ten list of things to do in the city were mostly restaurants, with one historic building that we went to visit and a T-shirt store as the remaining spots to visit. We took a walk down by the lake but it was tough walking around it. Vendors on the ground with their foods, fruits and used clothes/shoes that they are selling. Plus people have lean-to shacks built right next to the water. Very hard to be the two white people wandering around. There are some other tourists around, but they are all French, because… you guessed it… the second language in Madagascar is French! Uh oh. We don’t speak that language as our visit to Quebec City proved a few years ago. This is one of the few places over the past 4 months where people legitimately do not speak any English. No problem. Google translate and embarrassment will get us through this.

While researching Madagascar, we found out that all of the touristy things to do are really far away and spread throughout the island. We decided to go to the west coast, to a city called Morondava, to see the Baobab trees and visit a nature reserve that has lemurs and giant jumping rats… not kidding on that one. It apparently hops like a miniature kangaroo. So we were going to take the bus to get there. The problem is that the bus requires a reservation to be made by phone. Language barrier. So I asked the hotel receptionist who spoke a tiny bit of English if she could help me call to make the reservations. Nope. She immediately told me it was a terrible idea and that she should call me a driver. I protested for just a second but she was adamant that it was a bad idea, so I took her word. She found us a driver, Mr. Rudy, who picked us up early on Monday morning to make the drive to Morondava.

We started the journey, not really knowing what we were getting into. Our driver spoke a tiny bit of English and was accompanied by a guy that he called “the other driver”. This really confused us for the first 8 hours of the trip. We then realized why they would want a second driver. I’m not sure how I didn’t get this information during my research, but I thought the trip was only 6ish hours. Maybe I got mixed up when comparing different areas to visit – I don’t know. But the trip was 14 very long hours each way. The roads were horrible – huge potholes that required us to driver very slowly most of the drive, with entire parts of the road just washed away leaving just makeshift roads that locals had built. This drive also was a second reminder of how poor Madagascar is. The road we were driving on was the main road in this part of the country with what looked like the majority of the people living right on that road. So all day we saw kids walking to school and people pulling carts or carrying loads around. Everyone seemed to be dressed in clothes shipped over from the USA (I even saw a Belle Tire sweatshirt), but only half of the people wore shoes. Men in full suits walking down the road barefoot.

Seeing the kids in these towns gave me mixed emotions. We saw them walking to and from school in their uniforms (typically just a color requirement – everyone in green shirt and any time of shorts/pants/skirt, etc). So you feel good about this. But also I realized that there were a ton of kids who looked to be under 10 going to school. Where were the teenagers? So then I wonder, are they sent to the city to continue school (perhaps hopeful thinking on my part) or are they just done with school at this age to have babies and work? The kids walking to school seemed so normal – running, goofing off, playing. It makes me sad to think of what they have to look forward to and makes me feel so grateful for the luck we have of being from the USA and being able to give our children everything. Really, everything.

Here are cows pulling a cart:

So tough drive because of the roads and the poverty, but the view made it really special. The landscape in Madagascar is incredible – for hours we saw rice field after rice field (which a little corn mixed in). The green just went on forever.

We arrived just as the sun was setting and got to enjoy a few minutes of beautiful color on the beach.

After getting settled in, we grabbed some food and went to bed. Not much to do in town other than eat and go on day trips to other places. The next morning, we confirmed a nagging suspicion. The Kirindy National Park was closed because of the rainy season. This feels like something I should have known going into this. So we went to the beach instead. Our driver told us there was a resort there that we could get chairs for the day and lunch. But when we got there… it was closed. So Michael and I took a long walk on the beach. It went on forever – we walked in one direction for 30 or 40 minutes before turning around. There were some fishermen out getting dealing with their nets and their boats.

But we might have only seen 25 or so people, all locals, while walking. There were a few tourists in our area when we got back, but apparently in low season, it’s really dead.

After the beach we went back to hang out at the guest house. The baobabs are best seen at sunset and sunrise, so we had a 4pm departure time. The trip out to see the baobabs was a bit stressful. We passed the Avenue of the Baobabs and kept driving. The driver explained himself but we couldn’t understand what he was saying. After about 30 minutes of driving past, he stopped and asked for directions. uh oh. We then turned around and turned off on some side road. At this point, sunset was fast approaching and we were heading away from where we thought the avenue was… the thing we came to see. The only thing left because we aren’t going to see any giant. jumping. rats. At one point the driver thought about turning around. It was hectic, we didn’t know what to do and finally, we pulled up to an area with vendors and parking. We had arrived at Baobab Amoureux… Baobabs in Love.

They’re in love. Because they’re intertwined. We took pictures and were like… ok! Let’s go!! Love is cool… but the avenue at sunset! We had some anxiety rolling pretty thick at this point. And then – we saw a rainbow super far away. It’s hard to see in this picture, but it’s there:

Seeing that rainbow was a “relax, calm down and enjoy the moment” reminder.

While googling a second ago to get the official name for Baobabs in love, I found out that Baobab Trees are in the book The Little Prince. They are a dangerous menace that were believed to be rosebushes at first but then were feared that their roots would destroy the small planet. Apparently I need to reread this book because none of this rings a bell.

Additional googling shows that baobabs are considered to be sacred by the locals, with traditions stating that the baobabs were the first trees that the gods planted. But since the gods were inexperienced, they planted them upside down which is why they look so funny.

So – we made it back in time to walk the avenue during sunset. It did not disappoint.

One of the tough things about this stop is all the children begging for money. Maybe 40 of them.

This picture was toward the end as people were leaving but you can see how many kids are begging. It’s horrible. But leave it to Michael to make a ton of tiny friends. This age kid is his bread and butter. He just knows how to get kids so riled up. We knew the rules – if you take a picture of them, they will demand payment, so we were pretty careful not to photograph them, but within about 20 minutes of watching the sunrise, he was high fiving them, they were hanging on his arms and generally just rough housing.

This picture is not the most representative, but I was trying to sneak a picture. We had some money – but not enough to give to each of the kids, so we weren’t really sure what we were going to do about it. At one point, Michael had about five hanging off of his arms. It was actually really refreshing to see the kids just being kids and having fun. They would sometimes revert back to their “muuuuhhhhhneeeeeyyyy” (said in an abnormally deep tone unlike anything you’ve ever heard come out of a child), but mostly they just played with Michael.

Towards the end, Michael gave one of the older girls the cash we had and it was really interesting. She ran away with it, but then she came back and monitored the situation. It seemed that all of the kids were basically ordered to leave us alone. We had given them something and now we had earned our peace. But I kind of missed them following us around and I definitely loved Michael playing with them. They are the age so close to so many of our nieces and nephews and it made me miss them so much (and super grateful that they aren’t out here begging for money).

Another interesting thing? That rainbow followed us around for about 40 minutes. Isn’t that incredible?

OK – so really incredible.

After the Baobabs, the next best thing about the west coast was these prawns. That is a normal sized dinner plate. The prawns are huge.

The next day we drove back to Antananarivo. Another super long 14 hours. We spent a day here in the capital – getting hair cuts and running errands, including but not limited to buying 15 liters of water to take with us to Cape Town. Note, Michael’s haircut was fine. Mine resulted in additional cutting when I got back to the hotel with a tiny pair of scissors. I have no business cutting my own hair ever.

But today we’re off to South Africa! We are super pumped to be going back to a city that we love so much and we’re also pumped that we’re meeting our good friends Jeff and Vanessa there who will be taking the long flight from Philly today. Although there is that whole Cape Town running out of water thing, we are still incredibly pumped and cannot wait. I can’t say that we’re going to miss Madagascar. It has been an education for sure, not just in the country, but also a reminder that you can plan things to a T and things might not work out the way you want to. I wouldn’t say that we did Madagascar “right” and I’m bummed that this is the only lemur that we saw:

He was in a cage at the guest house we stayed at on the coast. Not really what you envision when you think of the animals in Madagascar. But with seven days here, it was apparently the best Michael and I could do this time. More planning, any understanding of French, or an English guide may have helped. But I’m grateful for that rainbow and for the kids playing with Michael and the beautiful country that we were able to see. And that’s just going to have to be good enough for our visit to Madagascar.

February 16

Ok – so I just posted how I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Seychelles. I was pumped to leave on the 15th and head to Madagascar. We left with ample time to get to the airport. The boards said our flight was delayed 2 hours. This is the first time on our trip that any flight has been delayed. But we have a 4 hour layover in Nairobi on our way to Madagascar, so we were not at all concerned approaching the desk. Big mistake.

We went to get our tickets and the guy had an issue with my passport. I know that I need more pages in my passport. But I have two blank pages at the end of my passport, so I was feeling ok about waiting until we got to Madagascar, when we have 8 days in one place, to fix this problem. Big mistake. Apparently, on my US passport, the last two pages aren’t real pages. They don’t say the words “visa” on them, like the other pages. What the heck. I had never noticed and no person had ever voiced a concern with me. They look the exact same as the other pages!!!

But the people with Kenya Airways wouldn’t give me tickets to Madagascar. They suggested I fly to my connection, Nairobi, go to the US embassy there, fix my problem and then continue on our travels. So I did. I emailed that embassy. Immediately. They told me to come in at 7:15am and get an emergency passport and it could be ready in an hour. Boom. Before leaving the Seychelles, Michael and I tied to get some information/documentation/vouchers outlining what Kenya Airways told me about my passport. But they refused. They told me to get my passport sorted and then come back to a ticketing desk in Nairobi and they would adjust our tickets. No need to worry, but no benefit to talking to them before we had my passport issues sorted.

So we went through customs at Nairobi, got an extra hotel, popped into the super cool bar in town for a few beers:

Note: in Nairobi, you dress up for a brewery. We looked a little foolish in our super casual clothing. But the bar was really cool. It was Havana night and they had a huge band with horns that was keeping a bunch of people dancing. We stayed for our beers and some apps, but I could have stayed for hours. It was clearly where the young professionals in Nairobi hang out. But we had an early meeting at the embassy, so off to bed for us!

We were at the embassy by 7:30 and after a very thorough screening process I was on American soil by 7:45. It felt… just like I was in Kenya. I was out the door by 8:30 with an “emergency passport” which means I need to get this issue dealt with again in the next 2 weeks or so. But at least it’ll let me get into Madagascar!

So we took a taxi right to airport to try to get on the 11am flight. We got there by 9:30 and were feeling good about our odds for about 2 and a half minutes. And then we were pretty sure we weren’t making the flight. They wanted to charge us almost $600 to get on the next flight. What?!?! We were told free!

The woman told us that our reservation didn’t have any memos or notations with it, so she didn’t know anything about our talks in Seychelles. I knew I should have gotten a voucher! My grievances:

1. They told me free and it is nearly 300 per person. If we knew it was going to cost anything, Michael would have gone ahead and I would have dealt with my problem.

2. The woman in Nairobi told us that Seychelles didn’t need to be concerned with my number of passport pages… that I would have been fine arriving in Madagascar. What the heck!?!? All I wanted was to be dropped off in Madagascar to deal with customs. I’m confident I could have convinced them to let me in to see my embassy. But they refused to give me a boarding pass to Madagascar.

3. We found out that the biggest problem we had in Nairobi is that we didn’t go speak with them when we first landed the night before – while Seychelles told us not to bother until we had my passport problems situated. Apparently going to the desk last night would have fixed a lot of problems, but we were advised otherwise.

We walked away with a $200 discount against the total cost and a $360 charge. Needless to say, Kenya Airways is getting an angry letter. But in the meantime, we’re enjoying the Kenya Airways lounge while waiting for our late night flight. That’s why there have been so many blog posts in one day. Great wifi!!! So sorry for the overload. But for now, it’s off to Madagascar!!!

February 13-15

OK – so I’m not sure I’d ever heard of the Seychelles before this trip. But Michael had and he knew it was fancy. Like Bali fancy. He wanted to make it happen and I had no reason not too. I like fancy beaches. So we booked just 2 days there. Now I’m pretty sure people are seeing a pattern right now in our travel. We are staying in places for 36-48 hours and it’s exhausting! But when we booked all of the flights a month(ish) ago, it made sense. That’s the problem with booking in advance – you might not know what you want. But the truth is that we really don’t know what we want until we get to a place. Once in Dubai and Zanzibar, we knew we wanted more days, but didn’t want to pay to change flights. Now that we’re in the Seychelles we know that we don’t want more days and we’re glad that we we’re leaving after two. Let me explain.

Seychelles – uninhabited until the 1700s when the French colonized and put people here. So French – 90% Catholic, but for some reason they drive on the wrong side of the road and their capital is “Victoria” so there are some British influences that we don’t understand. They speak a Creole language which when I’m reading just looks like phonetically spelled French. When I hear it, it’s not recognizable. But they all speak English as well. So… super easy for us.

We flew in on Fat Tuesday but were told not much was going on… the big holiday that everyone was excited about was Valentine’s Day. Hmm. Michael and I don’t typically celebrate that one.

We drove to our hotel – and got gouged by the taxi driver. We know we need to google how much it costs in advance, but it’s hard to stay on top of it sometimes. So we paid almost twice as much and even without the data knew we were getting hosed. So we started on a bad foot. The hotel was nice, but the wifi wasn’t working and dinner/drinks were SO EXPENSIVE. Beautiful scene though:

And the view from our balcony was nice too – note how please Michael was that I was taking this picture. You could actually see both the sunset and the sunrise from our balcony. Pretty incredible.

Besides hanging at our hotel, we also walked into the small beach town and spent the better part of a day laying out and wading into the crystal clear waters. It seemed like you could walk out forever and still see your toes.

Note: that island out there on the left in the pictures always had a cloud hanging over it. For days. I don’t understand what would cause that, but I swear – it always had a cloud.

So the island is beautiful. The food is delicious. William and Kate had their honeymoon here. That said… not our favorite. It was too expensive. And it wasn’t that special, in our opinion, to cost that much more. It was convenient that we stayed on a Catholic island that had open churches on Ash Wednesday… but otherwise, I preferred Zanzibar and it was much cheaper. Also we can get crystal clear waters in Culebra, Puerto Rice, with a shorter flight. Definitely not a place we ever have to come back. But can’t debate that the view is gorgeous.

February 11-13

We weren’t really all that interested in visiting Dubai. We didn’t really like Las Vegas, so… samesies, right? Wrong. Really not even close and I’m not sure why that thought was in my head. After we ended up with a layover in Dubai, we extended it to be there for 36 hours. I grabbed us a nice hotel in downtown and Michael started looking into restaurants. As soon as we started looking into the city, we started getting excited for it. Dubai is awesome! Duck bananas!!

We flew in late and went straight to bed. We almost thought about going out but it was too late and we were too tired. Better to start fresh the next day. So we got up, Michael went for a run and I went to enjoy a fancy and free breakfast at the hotel. Afterwards, we went to the mall to see the famous ski slopes! Here’s a fancy/amazing waterfountain:

Here’s the aquarium complete with divers:

Here are the super fancy shoes:

Here’s the Souk:

Here are the beautiful/incredible umbrellas which I love:

It has famous fountains that overlook the tallest building in the world:

This mall is incredible! And has no ski slopes. What!? Apparently Dubai has two incredible malls and we got lucky enough to end up at the “wrong” one. So we were going to have to hunt down the ski slopes after lunch. Michael booked us at this delicious Chinese restaurant, Zheng He’s, that overlooked the sail building. Boom! Knocking GDM’s recommendations off the list!

So after a little more research, we found the second mall and the ski slopes:

It was cool, but definitely didn’t want to pay to ski. So we watched for a bit, Michael thought about buying this hat and then we went back to the hotel for a short nap.

So this hat is supposed to be a license plate. Apparently, the more important you are in Dubai (rich and royalty), the lower your license plate number is. Apparently one man paid $9 million for the number 5. We happened to have lunch in the same hotel that was hosting the World Government Summit, so that might have added to our luck, but we saw 18 and 3 and were pumped about it.

So back to that nap… afterwards we went to the top of the tallest building in the world, obviously!

The Burj Khalifa is 828 meters high and what I think is cool is that Michael worked with one of the engineering firms that helped build it. This was definitely a cool tour for Michael. He was geeked about all the technical stuff surrounding the erection of a building that height.

Plus… really incredible views. The pictures do not do this city justice. What I thought was incredible about the tour was that the pictures taken during the construction were so different than the way the city looks now. Just 10 years ago, the city was almost nothing comparatively speaking. It was incredible. Plus the Burj was beautiful from the outside too:

Afterwards, we headed to dinner at a Thai place called Thiptara that was right on the fountains and we had a clutch table right next to the water. Now I will say, this is similar to Las Vegas – the fountains at the Bellagio.

Apparently there are 12 or 16 songs that get rotated. We saw Michael Jackson’s Thriller (complete with spooky mist), two more traditional songs that we didn’t recognize and Time to Say Goodbye sung by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. Here are two small clips. Really incredible!

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_1024.trim_.mov https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_1024.trim-1.mov

So that was it for Dubai. I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but we didn’t have enough time. The city was expensive (especially the meals) but I think we’d definitely come back. Everything was excessive and incredible.