October 11

"These days are just packed!"

Today's title is from the comic strip 'Calvin and Hobbes', where the two heros spend a summer day doing what little boys do. Seems that Matthew and I hit our stride today.

It started off fairly normal, us awaking to the Mediterranian sunshine. Here's a quick snap of Matthew looking relaxed after his morning shower. But Octavia and Francois had a surprise for us. They wouldn't tell us what it was, but that we definitely would be needing our passports. We loaded into their car and drove down to the airport in Cannes.

After Francois' hints at para-gliding, I think Matthew was getting nervous. Anyway, we actually do have a flight, and after looking we see we are headed across the Med to Africa!!

Octavia used to be a travel agent in Germany, organizing international type stuff, before she moved down here to be with Francois. So, it turns out, that she has some sort of deal with this travel company, and all we have to do is pay a small supplement. So we are off!

The deal was for round-trip flights, a kind of drive around an animal park, except here the park is the whole continent, and then a late-afternoon flight back. We arrived and they loaded us into a Land Rover-type thing, and off we were. Here is a cool shot of a baby giraffe. He was really cute.

We ate lunch with a small herd (I guess) of zebra milling pretty darn close. They seemed awfully tame to me, but the guide said that they were wild. After lunch I went to see how close I could get, when Matthew took this shot from the jeep. I was a little nervous about this! Fortunately Sean was only about 20-30 feet away from the car and I figured he had a head start on the Zebras. As I took the photograph I noticed a couple of them on the right looking over at him. Hopefully they were more scared of him then we were of them. It's a shame that the reflection of the jeep's windows can be seen in this photograph.

Really exciting was getting close to an elephant. Now these things I can understand why they don't give a hoot about us getting close. They are HUUUUUGE. I'd seen them at Woodland Park Zoo, but in real life it is a different story completely.

Now this was the highlight of the adventure, for me. The guide said that they wouldn't let us get anywhere near them, so it was time to use the zoom on the camera. Very, very big kitties, and I am sure that Togo is merely a sprinkle dessert topping for these guys. Way, way cool.

Super THANKS to Octavia and Francois for surprising us. Wow. This is definately a highlight of my trip so far. We'll have to buy them a super-cool gift from Italy or something.

We got back a bit late in the day, and met Francois' friends Lucy and Eric. They had a baby three months ago, and were on vacation from Chamonix. They say is snowed up there on Sept 15, so I can imagine why they wanted to get away. This is Francois with the baby. Look out Octavia!

You can probably imagine how tired we were, and here's the proof :-)

Here's Lucy in her hat, and Francois sitting, and then Eric and the baby for the first time at the sea. Both photos were too cute not to put up here.

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