The Cousins

It was awesome to have my cousin Jared and his wife Tiff here for a couple weeks! Actually, they're both my cousins: Jared is my first cousin and Tiff is my 3rd cousin! And Tiff is 2 months pregnant, so she was quite the trooper to come out all the way to Africa and be so tough despite the sickness.

They spent the first few days in Cape Town by themselves, doing all the things we did but they had amazing weather. They came here on Thursday and we left at 5am Friday to head to Krugers National Park (the biggest game reserve in the world). We stayed there until Saturday night and had amazing luck.

We saw lots of lions, giraffes, elephants, 3 crocodiles, and 2 cheetahs! They are a majorly endangered and there are only 200 in the whole park (there are 2,000 lions and 1,000 leopards just to give you an idea of how MASSIVE this reserve is. It's 217 miles long, the size of Utah). The first thing we saw in the park was this big Black Rhino (which are also endangered). It was the only one we saw the whole time (but we saw about a hundred White Rhinos).

We saw 3 other male lions passed out sleeping. And a family of 2 young male lions, 4 females and 3 cubs crossed the road right in front of us and we followed them for a bit.


These elephants were having some kind of domestic dispute. They fought in the middle of the road for 15 minutes!




We saw these 2 male lions that had just taken down a water buffalo and hadn't even started eating it yet. They were resting and one (on the left) was SERIOUSLY injured. He got up to walk and couldn't even go very far because he was limping so bad, looked like a badly broken leg or something.


And the best part, on our way out we saw 2 leopards! They are so rare and hard to find that in our whole time here, Ben and I have only seen ONE and it was in Tanzania. It was quite incredible.




We took them to church and they LOVED it. Tiff bore her testimony for the first time since she was 12 saying that she's never felt the Spirit like that before. Our ward is amazing and she just fell in love with the black people. It was an amazing meeting. Ben got up too and talked about our time here and leaving soon and I just lost it. I guess it hadn't really hit me until that moment how truly sad I am going to be to leave these people and this place. It has been the biggest blessing and best opportunity of our entire lives.

After church, we went to the Temple to take some family pictures of our favorite little family, the Kistens: Olivier, Marcia, Erin, and Leonni.


More of their beautiful family pictures on my photo blog soon.








Monday we saw New Moon! Finally, it came out late here in Africa. I actually really enjoyed it. It was SO much better than the first movie. But I don't think I can handle anymore, especially since Bella doesn't chose Jacob. Boo Bella.

Tuesday we went to our favorite place where we volunteer, the Rhino Lion Park. A baby Rhino:


To our future posterity (if we have any now):










Aren't they cute?




This was a baby Caracal, they're so cute!

We miss them already!! Thanks so much for coming! I hope it was the trip of a lifetime for you guys. It was so much fun and we can't wait to see them again when we go home. AND WE'RE SO HAPPY FOR YOUR NEW BABY COMING IN JULY!!

We leave for Mozambique next Tuesday! We're so excited to spend almost 3 weeks there and see Ben's mission! Also, we confirmed our coming home dates! I really can't believe our year is almost up and we only have about 4 WEEKS left here in Africa! It makes me so emotional just thinking about it. We'll spend a couple weeks in Utah seeing family/friends and then we'll be back in the San Fran office. We come home mid-January!

Cape Town

We had a GREAT time in Cape Town, despite the record-breaking horrible weather the one week we were there. We were so excited for this trip because Ben hasn't had a day off for about 5 months and also because it's just such a cool place. It's always on the Top 10 lists of places to visit. We left Thursday afternoon and stopped halfway for the night in Colesberg at this awesome campsite:

We continued on our way and arrived in Cape Town around 1pm. The weather was a little overcast, but not raining so we headed to Boulder Beach in Simon's Bay to see the penguins. On the way we saw this restaurant. I wanted to stop, but Ben said no:


The little penguinos! They are so cute.




It was molting season, hence the funny feathers:


Little buddies:














After the penguins, we drove down to the very tip of Africa, to Cape Point. We hiked to the top to the lighthouses and out to the edge. It was incredibly windy, but so cool.




Where should we go next?






Baboons are crazy. They are so funny to watch.


We had some fun on the beach:


Saturday morning, I got THE FLU!! And it was raining and crappy. We had quite the bad luck. We had no idea that the rain would persist every single day of our trip...and we'd never get to break out our swim suits. I was feeling okay enough to go to the City Center and see some of the historical sites. Here is the Castle of Good Hope:


And the court house:


And an awesome bedazzled car:


The rest of the day, I was throwing up and achy....which wasn't fun. But the weather was so crappy that at least it wasn't sunny when I was sick. Sunday morning we went to church at the Mowbray ward, the very first chapel built in South Africa in 1917! It was pretty cool. Then quickly back to bed to recover.

Monday was supposed to be Table Mountain day, but it was always covered in dark clouds and raining, so we pushed it off, praying we'd get one good day to hike it. So instead, we headed to Hermanus (1.5 hours away) to hopefully see some whales. It's always been my dream to see one and I didn't think we'd see any...with our luck.

WRONG! We saw like 50 whales!






These are Southern Right Whales and they come to the South African coast from Sept-November to breed and then they take their babies back to Antartica. There were lots of babies and this one was ALBINO! It's the only one they've ever seen!








There were lots of fun restaurants right on the beach and we were able to have some good food while watching all of this breaching! It was amazing. And it was good weather here.












I love their tails.




We went down to these rocks and 6-7 whales came right up to us and were rolling around and doing funny things. We were so close!


It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Dream come true! When we went back to Cape Town, we decided to go up to Table Mountain and try to hike it. There were still clouds but the weather was only supposed to get worse. We decided to hike it and talked to some of the people coming down that said it was totally worth it and you could catch glimpsed through the clouds now and then.


It was the hardest hike! I still didn't feel 100% and it was straight up the mountain. It rained harder and harder as we got closer and the wind got so bad we had to get down and brace ourselves so it wouldn't blow us off the cliffs. When we were only 20 minutes from the top, lots of people were suddenly coming down and told us that the mountain was closed because the weather was too bad. And the cable car that we were planning on riding down was closed too. BUMMER. We had to turn around and walk all the way back down.

A cool pic of Table Mountain without any clouds. (from cometocapetown.com)


Here was the view before the weather became crazy. Cape Town is known for having 4 seasons in one day. We'd wake up to blue skies and it would stay for about 20 minutes before it was dark as night and raining like crazy. I definitely prefer Jo'burg's weather.


Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we pretty much just chilled and relaxed. Ben studied hard for the GMAT (which he's planning on taking when we get back). The weather was just too poopy to do anything, we couldn't skydive or swim or anything. We were pretty disappointed...but still had a great time just being together. We did take some cards and hang on the beach a couple of times, but it only lasted about an hour before the weather got too bad again.

We left Cape Town on Friday morning to drive the Garden Route on the way home. We were hoping to leave the bad weather, but we seriously just took it with us everywhere we went. Even today being back in Joburg, it's overcast when it had been sunny previously. The Garden Route was really pretty, but it was hard to really enjoy the beaches with it raining. We stopped in Mossel Bay, Wilderness, Buffalo Bay, Knysna, and Plettensberg. We did a hike in Plettensberg to see these cute seals, there were 4,500 of them!

We stayed the night at a fun backpackers place called Starling Village where we got to play ping pong and turn down cocktails all night! We had skydiving set up for the next day, Saturday, and when we woke up it was the bluest skies of the whole trip. We were so excited, so we called but they said it was TOO WINDY!! Ah. We were so frustrated by this point. We decided to hang around and hope that the wind would settle down. It finally did around 1pm and they called and said "Let's do it!"



I wasn't as scared as I thought I would be. Bungee jumping was definitely scarier. I certainly had the butterflies and had many thoughts of "what if I die" .... but we LOVED it and are so happy we did it. Here's the beautiful view from above:


I didn't get super scared until the second he opened the door right next to me and I had to get my legs out on that ledge...wow. But we went out so fast and were falling, it all went by in a blur. It was sooooo awesome. And when he pulled that chute, it was like heaven. We stayed up in the air forever because of the wind and it was just so quiet and peaceful with stunning views of the coast and ocean.


We got the DVD's which are so funny, but way too long to post on here. I'll figure out how to cut them down shorter and post them sometime. After that, we just drove the long 14 hours home and didn't get back till 4am. Overall, we had a great time and loved the last 2 weeks of being together. Ben's back to work now on a tough new case, but all is well. We're excited for my cousin Jared and his wife Tiff to come visit in 2 weeks!! And also--we are officially the new volunteer lion caretakers at the Rhino Lion Nature Reserve!! We are so excited. Our names have been on the list since we got here, so we can't wait to spend most our weekends there playing with the cubs (and feeding them meat and cleaning their cages and stuff). Pretty dang cool huh?