Down on the farm

The building on the left is going to be for the family of the man that will be managing the farm on a day-today basis. Next to it is a greenhouse where I believe they are growing tomatoes.

This building you see here is a goat house in progress. There is probably a ramp going up there by now. They have a nice balcony with a view off the back.

I was lucky enough to have a chance to check out my cousin John's farm while in Kenya. It is taking forever to upload photos tonight, so I'll just be adding them piecemeal as I can. And I cannot say enough how wonderful it was to visit with John. He was a great host and I had the most amazing time. You'll probably be hearing that again.

Top left: That's John with his back to the camera taking a look at the progress of his composting.

Top right: The brown building is a mushroom house.

Cape Point continued...

Cape Point...and penguins!

My very own Shark Week

We're gonna need a bigger boat....

All the bad things that Julia and I endured while we were in Cape Town led to this great moment diving with Great White Sharks. I may be terrified to swim in places where I can't see what's below me, but for some strange reason I have always wanted to go cage diving with great whites. And Julia is absolutely obsessed with all kinds of sharks, so we got lucky enough to go out with Chris Fallows and his team (they shot the footage you see on Planet Earth) and see these beasts in the wild!

There is an island off Simon's town on the Cape pennisula where seals go to breed every year. This makes this area very popular with great whites since they love some delicious seal. So the day that we went was one of the first days of the breaching season. Breaching is when the sharks chase after the seals and leap out of the water. Unfortunately, the breaching didn't happen the morning we went out but we got to see a shark feeding on an already dead seal (they will scavenge for an easy meal) and we had 3 others come over an check out the boat.

Chris Fallows doesn't chum the waters to attract the sharks, but he put out a large chunk of tuna and a carpet cutout of a seal. Great Whites are very curious creatures and like to come over and check things out. They pretty much ignored the tuna, were very interested in the seal cutout and responded to the vibrations sent out when a pole was banged against the deck.

More to come...

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The Daring (and Sometimes Dangerous) Adventures of Megan and Julia in South Africa

My May holiday was supposed to start off with an educational tour to Swakopmund with the grade 11s. For whatever reason the transportation for this trip fell through so the kids had to stay up north and I got to start my vacation early...by going to Swakopmund anyways. I felt pretty bad about that. Especially since some of the kids didn't get the memo and showed up at school with their bags, all ready to go. It was terrible having to tell them the tour was cancelled, but they took it way better than American kids would.