Day 5 of trip to Land of Free & lots of choice June 29, 2010
Today was the first day of the ICRS (International Christian Retailers Show). The exhibition hall opened at 8:30am and Janet and I met at 7:30am to take the bus to the conference centre so that we could register. It was incredibly well organised (but I shouldn’t be surprised). When I thought bus to the conference centre I thought mini-bus but it turned out to be a full-size large 52 seater, air-conditioned bus (of course it would...
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Day 4 of Trip to Land of Free & Wealthy June 28, 2010
Today we woke up to very hot & muggy conditions in Chicago. We all seem to be over any jet-lag now and into the right time zone as we all had a goodnight’s sleep. As we were leaving for St Louis, we didn’t have any time to do anything today in Chicago except have breakfast and then we managed to watch the first half of the England v Germany game. We had a taxi booked for...
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Day 3 of Trip to Land of the Wealthy June 27, 2010
After seeing Saturday consumerism in action in Chicago I have changed the header to more correctly reflect American culture. We are staying one block off Michigan Avenue which is known as the Magnificent Mile. While the buildings in Chicago are quite impressive and often beautiful, the Trolley tour guide today said it is known now as the Magnificent Mile because of all the stores especially the expensive branded ones like Gucci, Armani, etc. It is just...
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Day 2 of Trip to Land of the Free June 26, 2010
Last night I went to bed at 9pm and fell asleep at 9:00:15 seconds. When I woke up I wondered why the sun came up so late and leaned over to check my watch and saw it was 4am. I thought I must have in my stupor last night set my watch incorrectly and so got up and checked my cellphone clock as well but it unfortunately reflected the same time. I thought I better get...
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Day 1 of Trip to the Land of the Free June 25, 2010
Some of you know and some of you might be surprised to know that we are actually now in the USA. While I said Day 1 in the header, it is more like Day 1 ½ as we actually left on Wednesday (23rd) evening from Cape Town. For those of you who don’t know, it was my birthday (no – don’t bother with late wishes I know who you are already :) ) so I got...
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Final Day at the Okovango Delta April 3, 2010
We were woken up again at 6am so that we could have our sunrise boat cruise with the hope of adding a few more birds to our list as well. It was still cloudy from the previous evening’s thunderstorm and much cooler than we had previously experienced (probably in the earlier 20s). After our morning coffee and hot chocolate we were in the boat and off into the Delta. It started to drizzle lightly but not...
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Day 5 at the Okovango Delta March 31, 2010
Today was a day that won’t be forgotten quickly. It is now 9:30pm and I am not sure that I will have energy to finish writing this tonight as I am exhausted. The kids were almost falling asleep into their food at supper they were so tired (and this after Helen, Stephen and I all had afternoon naps!). Well – let me tell you what happened. We were woken up at 5:30am with the delivery of...
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Day 4 at the Okovango Delta March 31, 2010
Either we are getting used to sleeping with the sounds of elephant and hippo eating or they both weren’t around last night (we think it was the latter). We decided not to go for an early morning drive as we had to leave at around 10am to be taken to the landing strip for our next flight to Xudum (pronounced Koo – dumb). We had a leisurely breakfast, packed up and said our goodbyes to the...
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Day 3 at the Okovango Delta March 31, 2010
We were again up for the 5:30am morning drive and it was pretty much a repeat pattern in that we didn’t see much game but we did see quite a few more birds.  By the end of the drive we were on over 90 birds and closing in on 100.  Our target is 150 so that definitely seems reachable.  When we got back Speedy said we were going to fish for our lunch so we had...
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Day 2 at the Okovango Delta March 30, 2010
We were woken up at 5:30am for a morning game drive.  After a quick breakfast we headed out in the game truck and while we saw the usual game (giraffe, elephant, impala, lechwe etc), we didn’t see much else except adding significantly to our bird list.  While looking at one particular bird and trying to identify it (we probably spent 15-20 minutes doing that), Michael suddenly pointed out the buffalo on the other side of the...
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