the glory and the horror

For a few pictures at Madikwe, click here.

I’m trying to decide if I want to go with Flickr or some other service for some higher resolution pictures. For now, Facebook will do.

Kathleen and I had our first full day off, so we spent the afternoon together riding around the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary in Swaziland’s Ezulwini Valley. We weren’t sure what to do exactly, so we hired a guide and rode horseback for several hours, exploring the beautiful country.

We saw a lot of elegant and beautiful animals, including zebra, warthogs, blesbok, nyala, kudu, and wildebeests. I think I got pictures of most of them, although I thought I’d try the kit lens first, since they didn’t seem so scared of humans, cars, or other signs of civilization. There were even a couple crocodiles. We had to stay away from this water, because according to our guide, they can jump 4-6 meters out of the water to say hi.

We also managed to see a few families of animals. We learned that when zebras walk, mom leads the way, and then the kiddos follow in birth order, eldest to youngest, and then dad brings up the rear. I told Kathleen we should be a zebra family and tell our kids to line up that way when we go traveling.

Not bad for the kit lens, eh? I really should have taken the telephoto, but we could only take the camera, and not my bag, on the actual horse, so that limited what I could have on me. If we go back to Mlilwane, we were thinking we might rent bikes instead next time, so that we could carry food, water, and lenses with us.

When we got back to the main camp area, I did switch out to the 70-300 f/4-5.6, and as I mentioned above, the animals weren’t scared of much. So a family of warthogs just starts hanging out in the main camp area. Of course, I couldn’t help but hear Poomba singing, “When I was a young warthooooooog!”

They actually seemed like rather clean and nice animals, and they just sat there, nosing the ground and hanging out. The lens could get up close and personal, as you can see. I was at least 25 feet away. The lighting wasn’t the best, and I’m still learning how to use this camera to get the best shots.

According to Kathleen, the real gas-passer on this trip was my horse. Every time we picked up the pace, she said she could hear my horse let loose. That’s what she gets, I guess, for being last in line.

Unfortunately, Kathleen lost a hoodie on the ride, which we doubt we’ll ever recover, but we left notice at the front desk just in case. If we get that back, that’ll be another amazing thing about this country. People are already very nice and extremely polite, and if this hoodie somehow comes back to us, well, that would just be icing on the cake.

Also, just so you guys can see what else I’ve been doing, here is the blog of a Dutch Reformed missionary to Swaziland to helped for the Swaziland Reformed Church. It was during my research for my last post that quite randomly (thank you, Google!) stumbled across his blog and the things that he and other Christians here in Swaziland are doing. I was particularly impressed by the AIDS home-based care ministry. With my interests in outpatient palliative and hospice care, seeing this happening always warms my heart. In resource-poor places, while we may not be able to aggressively treat and cure as much as we can in other places, we can still manage symptoms and pain and address other psychosocial, spiritual and emotional needs of patients as they are still going through the process of being sick, and then dying. That is something that the Church needs to step up in, both in developed and less developed situations.

After graduation, we went on a 7-day cruise of the western Caribbean out of Galveston, with stops in Key West (home of Hemingway for a while), Georgetown in Grand Cayman (where all the bad guys hide money), and the island of Cozumel (where they have spectacular SCUBA diving) off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula.

This was a much needed excuse to do a lot of nothing. As Kathleen said a time or two, the beauty of this sort of vacation is that you’re not allowed to cut it short, or bring too much “work” along with you. It’s basically a done deal, a set amount of time that you MUST be away from home, MUST be away from work, and MUST be in a different setting. Most people on this cruise were looking to do a lot of hanging out, walking around seeing stuff, shopping, tanning, and drinking, and that sort of carefree attitude was very apparent on the boat. Lots of alcohol. Lots of people by the pool, reading, tanning, sleeping, etc. Internet access was expensive (basically 50 cents a minute!), so people couldn’t hide away and surf or IM. It was a crowded enough cruise that people had to talk to other people, especially at breakfast and lunch in the dining room.

We boarded the ship (Rhapsody of the Seas) on Sunday after driving all morning from Dallas. It was a mostly uneventful drive after graduation the night before. Of course, there was completely unpredictable traffic in the greater Houston area, but I’m pretty sure no one is surprised by that. The highlight of the drive was the fact that I got to ride with my old college roommate who has been working overseas for the last 3+ years. It was a great opportunity to catch up on things and hear about his life. He had made some good friends through work and church overseas, and was going to miss them, but was looking forward to being closer to friends and family.

Anyway, we made the drive down without anything really interesting to speak of. Once we got to Galveston, we found the cruise terminal without a problem, unloaded, and got our luggage checked in while Kathleen and her mother went to park the car. This put us on the boat pretty quickly, as the check-in/security procedures were quite benign (this was Royal Caribbean Cruises, for those wondering). They have this SeaPass card, which is both convenient (such that you’re not carrying a lot of money on you) and an evil ploy to get you to spend more money (which is easier – to just swipe a plastic card, or carrying and counting out cash?).

So the food was amazing. Our waiter was from Turkey and our assistant waiter was from Romania (the region of Transylvania, no less!), and they were very nice and fun to talk to. Part of me wishes we had the chance to hang out with them outside of them being our waitstaff in the dining room. They even had a Ben & Jerry ice cream place on board. That wasn’t included, though, and you had to pay extra for that.

So our first stop was at Key West. Not so much to speak of. We didn’t get there until the early afternoon, and so we got off the boat and just BARELY made it in time to get to Hemingway’s house. Apparently, Key West has been home to many many Pulitzer prize-winning authors, and is currently home to a couple of famous authors right now (Judy Blume and some others).

Our feel is that it was just a nice beachy place to drink and eat some REALLY good key lime pie. Other than that, we weren’t too impressed.

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So it’s taken WEEKS for me to put stuff up. So here’s this much, and some pictures up to this point.

The side of the ship as we were docked in Key West

Hemingway wrote a lot of stuff here. Kathleen would know more about what he actually wrote while in Key West.

One of many polydactyl cats that live on the grounds of Hemingway’s former residence. You can actually see that extra toe.

Part 2: I’ll try to get us at least to some of the on the boat stuff, and maybe all the way to the Grand Caymans.

Thanks to whoever got me that Outside magazine subscription. It’s a very fun magazine with stunning pictures and fascinating articles.