Water Skiing and Garden Route

On Saturday, our friends the De Jongs invited us over for a braai- South African BBQ. They live on the Harbeestport Dam- "dam" is South African for "lake". All but Lydia had a turn out on the boat. Zeke just jumped off of the boat. Everyone else tried skiing. Amy and Mike both remembered how to waterski from their more youthful days and got up on two skiis just fine. Hailey managed to get up on two skiis after a few tries. Sarah, Nathanael, and Luke had varying levels of success with the help of a "boom" that stuck out the side of the boat that helps beginners learn to ski. It was very fun and we were all very sore the next day.

We soon leave for the Garden Route, which is sort of like South Africa's Big Sur- beautiful coastline, more African game, more dung beetles, Jackass Penguins, beaches, ostrich farms, train rides, and so much more. So big update when we get home.

P.S. Liz Fisher gets a HUGE SHOUTOUT for guessing that Uncle Matt's quiz about the song about the South African freedom fighter, was Peter Gabriel's "Biko". Way to go Liz.

A Weekend with Cheetahs

Yes, friends these are cheetahs and we were close enough to take these pictures on Friday at the De Wildt Cheetah Rehabilitation Center and Wildlife Reserve. The rehabilitation center takes in cheetahs that have caused problems on farms or have grown out of being cute pets. We were able to go on a little tour to feed the cheetahs. It all went quite swimmingly- the cheetahs got fed and lay down in the shade to eat. Eventually, Lydia and Ezekiel started to get a little squirmy and bored with the guide's cheetah information. Once they started climbing about in the safari truck the cheetahs perked up and approached the vehicle because they saw little "snacks" getting a bit risky with their jostling about. That made Amy a bit squeemish and we left the enclosure shortly after.

It was quite remarkable to be that close to a carnivore. If you look at their eyes you get the sense that they are thinking "You are nothing more than a potential meal and I would love to eat you." It is quite and experience to face an animal that clearly sees you only as food.

The animal here is an African Wild Dog. No, they are not cute. The noises the make are even less cute. This is part of the reason they are quite endangered. They catch rabies, distemper and other domesticated dog diseases, which causes problems. Also, people are somewhat disturbed by their choice of method for dispatching their prey. After hunting as a pack, they disembowel the prey first thing, which is understandably somewhat gross. We got to feed these animals too. They are not as interested in little children as snacks, it seems so we were less nervous in their pen.

These, as you are surely aware, are ostriches. The best thing about ostriches- even better than that thing about their heads in the sand- is the way they run. Our kids laughed and laughed as they watched these two femal ostriches run away from our car. You really have to see it to get the full sense of the comedy of these creatures movements. Let me try though...Their running can best be described as a bob and weave- including the head-with feathers and head going up and down and the birds going left and right with their feet running in that odd knees-that-bend-in-the-wrong-direction motion that's funny in itself.

Amy would be really really mad if we did not include this animal on our blog. This is a Kudu. It is pretty much Amy's favorite antelope. They are huge and their horns are a long curving and beautiful. If Amy hadn't already been married to me, the Kudu might have had a chance. She is really enamored with these magnificant animals.

In addition to the above animals we also saw the above Zebra- they remind me of striped punk rockers with mohawks. I can totally picture them with lots of piercings and lots of leather clothing. There was also a hippo we tracked all morning and finally found in his pond, impalas, and many many dumb-witted blesbok. That's the creature in the beautiful African landscape below.

One more thing to mention is how much we love warthogs. They really do look like Pumba and the best part about them is their tails that really do stand straight up. Apparently, it is a good year for warthogs. We saw at least four babies with every adult we saw. Just imagine how cute a baby Pumba would look like. Here is our best picture of a warthog.

The other creatures that we saw are not so appealing because they are an 8 inch long millipede thing and the bats that lived under the roof of our little chalet where we stayed while at De Wildt.


We will be seeing more and more animals I am sure but last weekend was certainly quite the African adventure. Stay tuned for more.

Fun with Poppy and Freddie

On Saturday March 14th we went to lunch at the home of my colleague, Poppy Mashego. She and her husband, Freddie, had a braai for us. ("Braai" is the South African word for barbeque- but bargeque doesn't really do justice to the typical South African braai.) Freddie cooked us beef, lamb, pork ribs, chicken, boer wors (South African sausages), greens, rice, green beans, salad, coleslaw, and we ate and at and ate. A family from Trinidad and Tobago joined us as well. It was a very international event, but very enjoyable as well. I would say that it was some of the best food I have had since coming here and the best socializing I have done in a long time.

The kids and Mike ran in our second race on Saturday also- The Sunrise Monster. It truly was a monster. The hilliest 5K any of us have ever done. We all ran a 5k. Amy was supposed to run in it, but decided to be a hostess to the 10 young single women from church that spent the night at our house. So Mike took her place doing the 5K, and actually only the older 4 ran. This is how the we placed in the race- same as the last time- Michael, Hailey, Luke, Nathanael, and Sarah. Very fun race. We will certainly do more.

Another camping trip this weekend, so look for more animal pictures- and maybe even dung beetles.

The Dung Beetle

This is a dung beetle.

This is Lydia's poem about a dung beetle:

"The Dung Beetle"

by Lydia Lyman

"This is a big beetle.
He’s have a big ball
Rolling of poop."

And here is a video of the same dung beetle rolling his poop...

Our First Safari!! [Hailey]

On Thursday we left for a place called Pilansburg which is about one and a half hours north from here. We went to a National Park there and inside the National Park is the Manyane Resort which is this campground. We stayed at this place until Saturday afternoon. On Thursday we just sent up camp (we bought a tent and all the other supplies needed. We are planning to always camp when we travel around Africa because it is much cheaper and easier. ) and ate yummy tinfoil dinners that my mom made. On Friday we got up at five to go and see the big animals. What you do is just get in your car with your animal identifying books and binoculars and just drive around and look. Until about ten that day we drove all around the park to see all the animals. The day was just amazing. We were so lucky and got to see so many things. I spotted the first animal which was a herd of zebras. Wild zebras!! I have seen wild zebras. Crazy. One thing that we saw most often was different kinds of antelope. There was springbok, kudo, waterbuck, etc. Actually, we saw them so often that they got rather boring. The zebras also got boring too because they are so common. We also got to see two types of wildebeests quite often too.
We all picked an animal that we really wanted to see and made it a goal to see. Luke’s was a rhino and as soon as he said it, Sarah started screaming, “RHINO, RHINO!,” and threw herself down on the floor. Turns out, right by the road are two HUGE white rhinos. I started freaking out to because they are known for charging cars and they really were about twenty feet from our car. Once we all calmed down, we got to look at them and enjoy them for a while. Apparently, white rhinos are very endangered and we are really very lucky to have seem them. We even saw about five more throughout the day, including a baby. Next, we saw a giraffe out in the distance. It was very far away but still very cool. We did however, later, get to see two more. They were just as close to us as the rhinos. We sat and watched them eat. They are just so majestic and beautiful.
There were also very many gorgeous birds flying around. We saw a couple of Fish Eagles which are just like Bald Eagles. Guinea fowl and Swensons Franklin were pretty popular too. Probably the coolest bird we saw was called a secretary bird and they are huge. It was up in a tree but we saw it really well with binoculars. It was like we were in Jurassic park because the bird looks pretty scary and is about as tall as Luke!
In the park they have these things called hides. They are like lookouts where you can watch animals at watering holes. You park your car in the parking lots and then walk into a gated walkway out to the hide. That is also the only time that you are allowed out of the car. So at one of these hides, we saw a real live hippo. Every once and a while he would pop out of that water and we would get to see part of his head. That was pretty cool. At another of these hides we had the coolest experience. When we first got there, there was really nothing to see. We waited for a while and soon enough, an ELEPHANT came lumbering over the hill towards the watering hole. We got to watch him as we walked towards us, and then he started to drinking water. Our five cameras were clicking so much, because how often will we get to see this? Then we thought he was going to leave because he walked around the dam(word for lake or pond here). But instead he proceeded to take a mud bath. We got to watch him as he sprayed himself and then roll around. It was sooooo cool to get to see that. After his bath he walked back over the hill. Awesome! Some other animals that we got to see were warthogs and baboons. The baboons were actually at our campsite. They are just like everywhere. They get into your stuff even more than raccoons and they can even open the trashcans that supposedly are “baboon proof” So they roam the campsite and some of them are as big as dogs. They are known to be very ferocious and you are not allowed to interact with them in any way. Scary. We saw two warthogs. One was out in the wild and very small but the other one was RIGHT BY OUR TENT. It was huge, like as long as a dining table and almost as tall. Man it was so scary. The animals aren’t supposed to get into the resort because there are big fences everywhere but somehow this guy got in and it was scary. Also in the campground were a whole herd of antelope. I woke up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom. I came out and there they were grazing right by the bathroom. Ahhh Africa is crazy.
So after driving through the park that morning we went mini-golfing and then swimming. Later in the evening we went out again and saw an ostrich, baboons, jackals, and an impala. We went to the restaurant on the camp site for dinner. Saturday morning we woke up early again. Unfortunantly it was really rainy and foggy so really the only thing that we saw was a crocodile, hippos, and more antelope. Then we went back to our campsite and packed up. We had soooo much fun and got to see so many things. The only disappointment was that we didn’t get to see any lions, but we will get more chances. So that was really fun. We came home Saturday afternoon and had some people over for dinner. That was my weekend it was AAAAAAAMMMMMMAAAAAZZZZZIIIINnnGGGGGG

Activity Updates [Amy]

The pictures are of some recent activities. We had the young single adults from our congregation over for dessert and Family Home Evening, a weekly activity we do in our church. They are an incredible bunch of people- all working hard and going to school to raise themselves up, very impressive. We also had the youth group over to swim and eat lunch. It was a lot of fun. Michael has been asked to teach a class at church on Marraige and Family Relationships, and I have been asked to teach in the women's group called Relief Society, as well as play the piano. Somehow this ward has decided that I am musical. I know I am somewhat, but I fear I may also be asked to play the organ in our church service as our organist moves next week. Yikes!!! Haven't ever played the organ, help Joan and Brian Help! I will be contacting you if indeed they call me to do this. I did get to lead the youth choir in singing the EFY medley last week in church. It is a beautiful song and the youth did extremely well. It had been planned for quite some time to have them sing without any arrangements being made for a pianist or a conductor. I was just at the building on the wed. before they performed and agreed to conduct. We had to use a CD for accompiament, but it sounded great.

We had an amazing weekend. We went camping for the first time at a place called Pilanesburg National Park. I will post pictures this week of our safari sightings, you won't believe it. Zoos have officially been ruined for the Lyman family. Seeing a wild animal when he can't see you is quite an experience. More on that later, as I need to go to bed. As a homeschooling update, we finished Chaucer and start on Shakespeare tomorrow. The play's the thing!! We love you all, take care.

Amy

The entire Lyman Family ran in the University of Pretoria 21K, 10K, and 5K race on the 21st of February. The picture at the right is us after the race. Actually nobody ran in the 21K- which is a half marathon, for those of you less familiar with the metric system- but Michael ran in the 10K and all the rest ran in the 5K. Well, Lydia actually rode in the stroller, which doesn't really qualify as running. Dad finished his 10K in about 54 minutes, Hailey finished her 5K in 24 minutes, Nathanael finished his 5K in 34 minutes, Sarah finished hers in 50 minutes, Luke finished in 33 minutes, and Mom and Lydia came in a bit later than the rest of us. :)

Big props go out to Hailey who finished sixth overall and third among the women and got a special medal for her finish. Who knew that along with volleyball, basketball, and field hockey, she was also a cross country runner. She and Mike run about 5K most mornings and apparently the training paid off.

South Africans take their running seriously. There is at least a 10K and 5K race every Saturday just in Pretoria almost all year round- and if you want to, you can go down to Johannesburg and run in a race every weekend on Sunday. Running is big here.