Bafana Bafana

The meaning of Bafana Bafana? Google it! We just spent 9 days of our Spring Break in the country of which Bafana Bafana is the national "football" team. We were able to spend quality time with some great friends including the Shearers and the Rainbolts. While in Cape Town, we ran into Tom and Lori on a daily basis...it was very nice to see them outside of a work setting. They really are like second parents to us over here the way they look after us. They took us to an amazing restaurant called Balthazar's. We wouldn't even be writing this blog if it wasn't for Mr. Shearer getting us over here so we are, of course, eternally grateful. We also got to spend the last few days in Johannesburg with the Rainbolts. They are a lot like older siblings to us. I know I look up to David quite a bit and respect him as a mentor to me. Kara really enjoys spending girl time with Gina as they go and get manicures and pedicures once a month or so. Their kids have made their way into the ranks of niece and nephew and actually call us Auntie Kara and Uncle Bryan...it's pretty good stuff and we've really enjoyed watching them flourish over here.

As I'm sure you have noticed above this post, there are links to two sound recordings I made over the Spring Break. Both come from Johannesburg...there are more that I have made including the sounds of a group of musicians playing some tribal hits. I will get that uploaded as soon as I can, but the upload process takes forever with our super slow internet connection. Anyway, without further ado, let's get to the photos! We took over 600 photos while in Cape Town, Stellenbosch, and Joburg. This was a lot more than I was anticipating! Here are some of our favorites, again sizes are shrunk down to help minimize upload times!

The photos kind of work backwards, so these are from the end of our trip. You can see me down there collecting the audio of the 2 year old female, Charlotte. I think if you actually listen close enough to the audio recording, you might hear the camera snap in the background . I can't remember if the edited version has the camera click in it or if I took that part out...just listen closely! That's Emily and Jacob there with me. Charlotte LOVED Emily!!! She just wanted to play with her the whole time.

The cheetahs that we encountered were part of the De Wildt Cheetah Park about an hour outside of Joburg. They had tons of different animals beyond Cheetahs, but of course, cheetahs were the main attraction. I have to say that this was one of the coolest experiences of our whole trip. Here's a picture of three cheetahs eating! They actually feed these guys Iams cat food!! Pretty good stuff eh? I think these three would agree. It was pretty interesting to see all of the wild animals associate our vehicle with feeding time. I think there are 2 tours a day and to get the animals to perform, or to be in the vicinity, they feed them while we're there. The wild dogs were the craziest! They knew it was lunch time when we came through the gates!

Here's a couple more cheetah pictures!



Okay, the next picture is the one Kara is most excited about. This is a picture of us and a King Cheetah named Shaka. The King Cheetah is not a different species, it's just a different version of the same traits that the cheetah's have. In other words, the dark pattern is not common on cheetahs and only a small handful of King Cheetah's have been spotted in the wild. The last spotting was in the 70's, but nonetheless, it's not impossible to see. They happen when a recessive trait is activated...Kara can tell you a lot more about it, but we saw one here at De Wildt and another back at Spier just outside of Stellenbosch.

Kara was in heaven petting Shaka! By the way, do you notice anything about Kara's hair here!?!? It's brown!

Just me recording Charlotte.

This was another cheetah that we got an opportunity to pet when we visited the Spier cheetah center. This guy's name was Hemingway! At one point, he was alerted to a dog barking and we had to step away to make sure he didn't do anything crazy. This was the biggest cheetah they had at the park...pretty big. On a side note, they have a course that they let the cheetahs run on twice a week. The public is not allowed to view it, but they chase a plastic bag attached to some sort of vehicle that is similar to what they use at Greyhound tracks. The cubs love chasing it I guess. They timed the fastest cheetah in the world at this facility...0-60 MPH in less than 3 seconds. He ran a 100 meter dash in 6.1 seconds...absolutely flying!

This is a picture of the other King Cheetah we met at Spier...his name is X-Ray and he's 11 months old. He loved Kara!

X-Ray again. Check out the dark stripes on his back. Pretty cool huh?

Random Cheetah pic.
He was just yawning...calm down!!!

Okay, moving on from the cheetahs, we now have penguins! We took a cape tour for an entire day. Part of it was visiting the penguins out near the Cape. These guys were pretty cute. It was extremely windy so Kara and I didn't stay long. These guys were just trying to weather the sandblasts.


Check out that water! It was pretty gorgeous out there.

Hey hey!!! Guess who those two are?!?! Not the penguins silly...the shadows!

This is probably the most photographed location in all of South Africa...so of course we had to get ours taken. It was extremely extremely windy. They used to call this the Cape of Storms until the Dutch realized that with that name, no sailors would ever volunteer to sail down to deliver supplies. So they had to change the name to the Cape of Good Hope...yeah...right.

We started our trip in Cape Town and one of the first excursions we took was to the top of Table Mountain. This picture was actually taken from about 3 miles away but I was fully zoomed in. The clouds spill over the top of table mountain and so they cleverly call the clouds the "Table Cloth."

Here we are at a place called Camp's Bay...houses down here are pretty expensive. In the millions.
After Camp's Bay, we took a trip out to a place called Seal Island. I almost got sea-sick on the way out there. I don't get seasick often so that gives you an idea of how rough the trip out there was.

No doctoring done to this photo...

Or this one. You can see just beyond the cape there in the distance...that's Seal Island.
Here we are at the top of Table Mountain. Off in the background is the Indian Ocean. Notice Kara's hair is now blonde...this is because we are still moving backwards in time!! This was very early into our trip.

The Table Cloth.

Again...
After Table Mountain, we made our way to the old Slave Quarters. Today, the houses are painted in "Jessie Colors" as Auntie Kara calls them :-)!



The top of Table Mountain was foggy one second, and then gorgeous the next...then foggy again. The wind was blowing the clouds right over us for most of that morning.

Cape town way off in the distance down there.

I love this picture of my wife!



This picture above is my first attempt at something called HDRI...check out this link to HDR imaging used on photos of Graffiti. This technique is something I'm going to explore further when we get home but it's pretty darn cool. You need Photoshop CS2 or CS3 to be able to do it.

Here's that band I was telling you about earlier. I'm going to try and get the audio uploaded but don't be surprised if you have to wait until we get home to hear it!!

Table Mountain without the table cloth on it. It was very windy still up there, so windy that they had to close the cable car to the top.

There's Kara standing by a statue of Nelson Mandela. By the way, we went to the Apartheid Museum (pronounced in Afrikaans "Apart-hate"). It was unbelievable...


And here's one last picture for you. Me standing next to a chunk of the Berlin Wall. Actually, as a fan of all things Jack Bauer, I wanted everybody to see my shirt...

Anyway, we really enjoyed our break and I'm glad to finally be done with this blog post. 3 days and counting just to get these pictures uploaded and mp3's working. Hope you enjoy! Talk to you soon.