Day 16

 It's July. It's the 21st. It is the 21st of July, and that can mean only one thing. It's Max's birthday!

As it's Max's 15th today, we decided to let him have a lie in, and take the day off. Well, we told him we would all take just the morning off, but would get back to work in the afternoon. Little did he know that we had organised a bit of a surprise for him, along with the help of the wonderful Tammy and Romeo.

Ines and Kira had baked a really nice chocolate cake (using a just a saucepan and some ingenuity) and had prepared a few little prezzies for him the night before, while I had got him out of the house under the pretext of helping with the blog.

Kira had bought a bag of South African lollipops, which according to the packaging, contained 25 flavours! Upon opening the packet however, we found them to only contain....2. Despite that, Kira had painstakingly taken 15 of them, and attached a lovely little birthday message to each. He had already had his main pressie, an ipod, before we left for SA, but another surprise was a trip on the Bandit to Silverstone in September for the British round of MotoGP. We're both very much looking forward to it!

Ines prepared a delicious cheese on toast with an egg on top for us all (apart from Kira who inexplicably doesn't like eggs.!?) which we all ate happily on our verandah, in the gorgeous african sunshine. First bit of actual warmth for days!

Cheese, toast, egg, and sun. It rarely gets better than this

Salute!

One of the not very many flavours of lollopop

CAKE!

Self-timer attempt #1

Self-timer attempt #2

About midday, Romeo and Tammy arrived and joined us in a bit of tea and cake, going along with the illusion that they were picking us up as usual to go down to work at Hopewell.

We jumped in the Cruiser and Romeo, casual as you like, said we just had to pop up to the Lodge quickly, before going down to the Barn, and turned off down one of the game drive tracks. Max, at this point, still thought we were going to work :)

This isn't the way to the Barn...?

Hey humans...you're going the wrong way, eh

He has no idea

Still no eye deer

Eventually, after what Max thought was just the long way round, though he was beginning to suspect something was up, we reached our destination. As we went through the gates to the area where the cheetahs live, we explained that this was his bithday surprise.

A few minutes later we stopped and waited and sure enough, two beautiful cheetahs (Batman and Robin) came walking towards the car. As they are reasonably tame we were allowed to get out and get really close. They live entirely in the wild, so it meant we still had to be very careful... no sudden movements, stand your ground if they charge etc.

To see something so wild and potentially dangerous so close up was exhilerating. It was truly awesome. We all loved every second of it, and it was a lovely surprise for Max.

Wondering if this was such a good idea after all now...

Never before have we felt so much like dinner

Luckily a short lie down under a tree was more attractive than eating us

Good kitty...nice kitty....

....please don't kill, or seriously maim us

You're not leaving until you've fed us...one way...or another

After walking with them for a while they seemed to get more bored of our company than we did of theirs, so we got back into the Cruiser to continue our surprise game drive around Kuzuko. Along the way we stopped and had a fantastic view of a large collection of various animals who were congregating alongside a river that runs through Kuzuko. Wilderbeast, kudus, springboks, all sorts were in their respective herds. That was also pretty awesome.

As we made our way back home still on the game drive we were lucky to see many elephants doing their thing, which pleased Ines a lot as that is her favourite animal (mine was cheetahs, and is even more so after today!)

Berry nice

Mud shower!

Beautiful and enormous creatures

We also startled some kudu on the way! Haha! you silly kudu!

Run away! Run away!

After a brilliant afternoon we got home, thanked Tammy and Romeo for spending almost all of their day off helping give Max a birthday to remember, and after a nice dinner continued work on plans for the Barn for the time we still have left here.

As we were doing so, we got a visit from another of Kuzuko's rangers, a really nice guy called Johnathon, who came bearing the gift of cake for Max, baked by the wonderful Kuzuko kitchen staff (Thank you, Zimma!)

Johnathon plus cake equals happiness!

MORE CAKE!

Having Max's cake... and eating it

This...this

We all insist on the highest attemtion to detail...

And sometimes we just completely disagree...

Later I left them all to carry on the good work to come and update this blog (being a few days behind I still had plenty to catch up on and worked till stupid o'clock in the morning again...). and the next day I discovered they had all worked well past midnight as well. Coming up with more specific ideas for the educational parts for the Barn, and exhibits, which especially for the kids, and Max in particular as it was his birthday, showed some true dedication to the cause. I'm proud of them all!