Happy end of July!

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We enjoyed a few days away with our visitors: Pam and Jack and Hannah and Brandon. We went to Matopos National Park SW of Bulawayo and spent 4 nights there. A beautiful setting with lots of balancing rocks. We enjoyed climbing up mountains to see caves with bush painting in them from thousands of years ago. We enjoyed a chance encounter with a native rock cutter who made rocks to use on our feet to smooth them. We called that getting out feet stoned!












We had a game park close by and saw rhinos everywhere we turned as well as impala and warthogs and plenty of monkeys and baboons. We had monkeys that surrounded our cabins everyday and tried to sneak in if the door was left open! One got in and got into a big bag of biscuits (cookies) and so we called them monkey biscuits and had to throw the whole bag out!












We took a day trip to Victoria Falls (6 hours each way!) and on the way home Pam yelled "elephant" and so Jack and I quickly braced our heads behind the seats, thinking he was in the road and we were going to run into him. He was right by the side of the road--so we were able to see him well as our heartbeats returned to normal!
On our way home to Harare we stopped off to see the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo. This is a wonderful museum with lots of rich history. We got to the museum and they said it was closed because of no ZESA (electricity!)! So I asked them if we could still see it if we provided our own torches (flashlights) and they said yes but you still have to pay! So we enjoyed our own speacial tour of the museum in the dark with torches. We called it "Night at the Museum--Part 3!" It would make a good movie, don't you think?












We had to say goodbye to Pam and Jack who returned to Seattle and Hannah and Brandon who returned to Ringwood, NJ on Wed. this week. On Friday we welcomed our new visitor Liz Willis, a final semester nursing student from Sonoma State University near my home area in CA! It is always fun having visitors and we are thankful for the help! Month end reports are due soon!






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