Quiet week, busy weekend!

The week was not really quiet but it was uninteresting from a blogging perspective. It was pretty much all work and stress and panic and worry and client stuff but over all, it went pretty well. It's over now and I'm on vacation, although it doesn't feel like a good time for us to be out and about and having a vacation when it's sort of a crucial time at work. But there are good people who know far more than I do working on this project so my worry is minimal. One good thing that happened this week was that we saw ducklings at the pond at the client's office. They were SO cute. But I worry about their survival, with the various evil mallards and geese in the area, not to mention the mutant fish that live in that pond. But in the meantime, I got cute pictures!



Yesterday, we did more wine country and mountain driving. We ended up driving WAAAY more than we expected to and by the evening, decided we were close enough that we could try to get to the Indian Ocean side of the Cape. It was pretty cool - we got there right after sunset so I don't have a lot of great pictures. It was a very pretty drive though - we saw baboons (no pictures - they were too fast) and lots of amazing mountains.

By the time we headed home, it was dark (full moon! pretty stars!) and the cold front started to move in so it started to rain. Poor Darryl, my co-worker, had a hard time driving home, since we suddenly realized we were about 250 kms from Capetown.

At one point, we ended up on a random gravel road. It was long and scary so we decided we would turn back and get to paved road. On the way back, Darryl goes "WHAT THE HELL?" because all he saw was large animal eyes shining in his headlights. Turns out it was two COWS being driven by a dude on a bicycle. He waved and went past us. It was very surreal (like ... welcome to Africa!).

The other excitement on the way home (other than the falling rocks and the nearly running out of gas) was the fact that we saw a HUGE brush fire on the mountains. It was really bright - looked like lava flowing down the mountain. Very strange.

We got home pretty late and very tired and then were up bright and early this morning to pick up Christian! He's in and is doing pretty good. We've kept him vertical most of the day although I don't think he'll last too much longer.

We went to the Kirschenbosch Botanical Gardens - really beautiful against the backdrop of the mountains. Unfortunately, the weather really didn't hold up so we got pretty wet but it was on and off pretty good. I got some very pretty pictures.

Right now, I'm worried because Francois, who is a local colleague, who is supposed to be helping me with my plan for the rest of the week, said he has sent me the itinerary but it hasn't come through yet. I just don't understand - he's tried about 3 times with no luck. He's doing me a huge favor by setting this up for me and I feel really bad to keep calling him but it just isn't coming through! Very frustrating, particularly for my inner planning freak. I just checked again and no luck and now he's not answering his phone :(

Argh!!!

I'll probably be pretty off line the next few days (assuming this email ever goes through) since Christian and I are heading out either tomorrow or Monday for 4 or 5 days travelling around the area. I'll blog when I can, and post photos too.