Well, our Great Adventure is over and we’re back home. Daniel, for lunch today we had an unnamed dish that Marita made — spread good mustard over ham slices, wrap them around banana halves, make a cheese sauce to pour over and bake for about 1/2 hour, long enough to cook the banana. It sounds odd to me, but I tell you, it’s really delicious! And with good wine, even better. I have to say, we have never had a bad bottle of wine in South Africa. Everything we tried was just so delicious — even those wines that I think are weaker than I usually like, such as merlot and shiraz, were delicious.
Addo the elephant park was quite swell — more so because it was rainy and gray all day and we thought we wouldn’t see any game on the sunset drive. But some of what we saw included eland, zebra, hartebeaste, kudu, secretary bird, ostriches, merkats, bushbok (well, Marita saw it), two jackals, an eagle owl, cape buffalo and lots of elephants. Close up elephants. Then after a lovely meal at the restaurant, we went to our chalets and sleep. In the morning we decided not to do the drive, but just go on our own after a most marvelous breakfast with beautiful little yellow birds! Maybe yellow-throated warblers? There were swarms of them, so we gave them bread crumbs so they could eat along with us — there we were, on the porch overlooking lovely green landscape surrounded by yellow birds. On the drive we saw lots of kudu and warthogs, but only one elephant close up — but any wildlife is thrilling, and warthogs are so funny, being so busy trotting along swishing their little skinny tails. Addo had to satisfy us because we saw almost no game during the drive home — I saw a buck, that might have been juvenile eland, and we saw some blesbok and springbok. The cows, sheep and goats we missed on the trip down, we saw coming home! We feel like we can say we’ve really seen South Africa now, having been in Gautang, Limpopo, Free State, Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal states (provinces). Western Cape is the only province not under ANC control and it is the cleanest, best-run or so it appears. We stopped in Blomfontein to see the supreme court (different from the constitutional court, which is in Pretoria) and got a great tour from one of the security people, a woman named Martha. Don’t know if we would have normally gotten that, so we were thrilled. Pictures to follow, sometime soon, I swear. We also went to the national Afrikaans literature library, which also is the Sotho literature library, and that was exciting — going to have to search Amazon for Afrikaans writers.
Sandy, when we got home, Marita’s dalia tree was blooming — have you ever heard of that? Beautiful pinky purplish flower, long petals with a yellow center, sort of reminiscent of cosmos except for the shape of the petal. And you would so love all the aloes blooming everwhere and the proteas — the fynbos is FULL of proteas and they are in bloom now. Fynbos is only in the cape region. Read in the paper today that someone has just found another species of fynbos — a tiny blue-purple flower. From my bed, through the banana leaves I see red hibiscus. And green, green grass — what a sight. Laird took photos for you of flowers and plants and Safari, the nursery where I want to live. Plus, even though Marita hates them, I LOVE the palm trees — mostly date palms and others that aren’t Washingtonians, Queens or the like.
We have an appointment to go to a diamond mine in Cullinan on the 29th and another few adventures to go before we take the Big Bird back. We miss you all and can’t wait to see you! Africanly yours, jm & lg
lairdandjonelle 
Hopefully, my present will come from the diamond mine! 😉