Adventures in Africa

I'm borrowing this idea from my dear friend, Dana, who is currently in Cameroon. While she's gone, her husband is blogging all her texts and emails for us. I thought that was such a cool idea and I wanted to do the same for Eric's trip to South Africa this week. Plus it was a good excuse to jump start the blog again.

So he's in Cape Town for a few days and then is heading to Johannesburg. I guess I have to be careful what details I include due to the secure nature of his work. But I can tell you that Maeve steadfastly insisted that this time she does not want a dress from Africa but a pair of shoes. When Eric claimed not to know her shoe size she was quick to solve that problem: "I'll just come with you and try them on!" A great solution except for the $4000 plane ticket. He is loving being right on the coast and went running this morning. Something strange was happening with the GPS tracker he usually uses for distance and he finally quit after what the GPS said was about 3 miles. But when he tracked it on an actual map it turned out that he ran 10 miles! Eric was so surprised because he hadn't been breathing hard at all, and then he realized that he's now at sea level instead of the high altitude of Albuquerque so his lung capacity was huge. I don't really understand how someone can accidentally run 10 miles. I would have quit long before then!

Other cool things are seeing a sea lion swimming along the shore while running on a beach path and visiting the market where there is a shop that sells beautifully carved ostrich egg lamps. Definitely things we don't have here!