Down in Africa!

Day 1

All of us (me, Bobby, Bianca, and Bobby's parents) were all leaving NYC today...only his parents and Bianca going one way and us 2 the other way. We took his parents to the LaGuardia airport to help as much as we could with Bianca before they went through security. Everything went smoothly and it came time for me to say goodbye to Bianca for the first time. I was so sad, I'd never spent a day away from her, but she loves Gramma and Papa, so I wasn't worried. We said goodbye to our little girl and off we went (yes, I cried a little, shh!). 

We headed off to JFK for our flight and went on our way. It's weird not having your kid with you. I was constantly looking for her and her diaper bag. We got on our flight and off to Dubai we went. 

Day 2

It was a pretty good flight and they actually had yummy food on the plane. We were kind of zonked when we got there though, but we had an 18 hour layover, so we needed to explore some of course! The ATMs there wouldn't let us take out any money, so we were getting frustrated, but it all worked out eventually and off to the subway we went! It was the cleanest subway I've ever seen, it was nuts!

We got off where the biggest mall was, but we didn't realize Dubai is not a walking city...it's a long, hot, horrible walk from the subway to the mall. And doing this pregnant is not fun. Our first stop at the mall was to down a couple bottles of water. Then we just walked around until we found the Burj Khalifa, or the world's largest tower. We had good timing because we got tickets to go in there at a decent time, score! We ate some Potbelly's for lunch (yeah this mall is AWESOME! They have every restaurant and fast food place imaginable!) and then went up the tower!

The views were AMAZING! It was a bit hazy out so it was hard to see the islands shaped like the world and such far off, but it was still pretty awesome!.We walked around and explored and then came back down.  I kept forgetting that I can't talk to the men there though. I kept saying "thank you" to them because I'm polite like that, and then they don't even look at me and I was like like oops. Awkward. We decided it was time for a nap, so we asked for directions to our hotel, since on paper it SAID it was close to the mall. Well we get some directions, but of course we get lost and it's so hot out and yuck. In the end we just decided to take a cab to the hotel (which was walk-able, oops!). We got there and it was beautiful in there and the people were so nice, but it took FOREVER to get our room and I was so exhausted at that point, I was falling asleep in the lobby. But they gave us some fresh orange juice, so that was good. As soon as we got to our room we took a good long nap. When we woke up we decided to go back to the mall to explore and eat dinner!

A fashion walkway in the mall.

An Arabian marketplace

They had that Millions of Milkshakes shop from LA there, so we had to get a milkshake. Then we got some dinner and went back to the hotel. We got our stuff and went back to the airport and waited for our flight to Mauritius. 

Day 3

We got to Mauritius earlier in the day. Our driver was there waiting. The drive was about 45 mins long, but it was beautiful. He'd point out fun facts about where we were at and about the sugar cane that were growing everywhere. It was nice. When we got to the resort they set us up in our room, which was HUGE! It was awesome. We decided to take a little nap and then set out and go swimming or canoeing. 

But we didn't wake up at 3 like we planned. We woke up and it was dark out. We missed the rest of the day here, boo! So we went to check out whatever restaurant was open at that point, but we barely missed the bar food being open, so we just got some ginger ales and then ordered room service. We ordered kids pizzas, fries, and a chocolate mousse to split. They came into our room and brought a nice table cloth, layed all of the food down all of the food, and made it look all fancy. All for pizza, fries, and mousse. We were amused. We just ate, watched TV and went to sleep hoping to wake up early tomorrow!

Day 4

Sadly, on our only full day here it was supposed to rain and be semi-crappy. Just our luck. We ate breakfast and went canoeing right away. The water was really nice. You could see coral underneath you. After a little bit we went back inside and decided that we were going swimming in the Indian Ocean no matter what! It was cold and a bit rainy, but we can say we did it!

We warmed up, showered, and waited until the storm calmed down a bit before going back outside again. We went out in the water in a paddle boat, which was super fun. Then at 3 they had archery. Bobby thought it'd be fun to do, so we tried it. He was good. I still suck (we did this in high school gym class). But it was fun to watch actually!

That night we just walked around and ate dinner at one of the restaurants by the water. Mauritius must be even cooler when it's not their rainy season. We've been calling Bianca every night. It sounds like she's having fun in Oklahoma! I guess one day she went to go feed the ducks some bread, but by the time they got to the park, his mom discovered that she ate all the bread herself! Haha! That's our girl! Everytime we talk to her she says "hi mama! Hi dada!" and sings songs with us. So cute. WE MISS YOU, BIANCA!

Day 5


We were leaving today, but we still wanted to get some fun in before we left, since it was really nice out today (go figure). We took pictures of our room, ate yummy breakfast, and then took one last canoe ride. Bobby was tempted to have us go over these huge waves way out there, but I talked him out of it. ;) A sail boat actually did it though, and it was interesting to watch it.

Our room

We got our stuff and just waited for our driver to come and take us to the airport. He was a bit late, but we were early for our flight anyways. It was fun, Mauritius! We were flying to our safari next, hooray! We went through Johanesburg, where we spent the night. We heard it was dangerous, so we just stayed in an airport hotel.

Day 6

We headed out When we landed, we weren't sure it was a real airport. Check it out:

Yeah. That's it. Crazy! So our tour guide found us and we rode back in his open top jeep to the resort. On the way we saw a warthog, a giraffe, and some monkeys. Cool!

We settled into our room and got ready for our 4pm Safari! It was very exciting...and cold actually. I'm glad we were on the edge of a Malaria zone because it caused us to dress really warm (the whole time I wore stretch pants, jeans over them, 2 shirts, and my jacket). We saw some neat stuff this safari though! Like these worms that link up and cross the road together. We saw giraffes, monkeys, kudus, impalas, warthogs, and lion TRACKS! They tried so hard to find the lions, but we didn't see them, boo! But we did get to see a big family of rhinos by the water hole. They were cute actually. When the sun went down, it was freezing. I discovered if you put the blanket over your head you get warmer, which was nice.

I guess you eat dinner with your group at night, which was nice to get to know everybody. The food is FANTASTIC there! I could gain 25 lbs here haha. It'd balance out the fact that in Asia I lost 5 lbs haha.

Day 7


The safari in the morning was at 6:30AM. They called and woke everyone up at 5am, and then we could get ready and eat a "snack" before the safari. Again, it was super cold that morning (see below).

Our guides were awesome and were determined to find those lions, so we did a lot of off-roading today. They'd just cut down branches with their machetes and we'd be on our way. It was crazy though! We saw all the usual animals we saw before PLUS...

ELEPHANTS!!! We were super close to them too. No zoom in these pictures. It was funny because we were sitting there and all of a sudden the elephant that was right next to Bobby started to come at us. Our guide quickly turned the car on and sped away before my hubby was squished by Dumbo (Thanks, Erich!) 

BABY ELEPHANT!!!

We saw some buffalo and zebras drinking next and then they kept getting radios about the lions being close in the brush, so a ducking our heads we went into the brush to find them.

AND WE FOUND THEM!!! Oh my, they were too cute! The mommy and daddy were cuddling and snuggling. Reminded me of Erikobbby, hehe. :) Ahh, dream come true. Such cute kitties!

After the safari we ate breakfast and warmed up. We walked around a little bit, but there wasn't much to see/do really. We had another safari at 4:30 again, yay!

Our bathroom

Our group! The Brazilians, us, and missing was the young Italian couple

We were in higher spirits this safari since we saw those lions. We still had some more neat things to see though, like a giraffe laying down, which they only do for 45 mins a day! We saw the usuals, and then WE SAW SIMBA AND NALA! Bobby told me we probably wouldn't see any lion cubs, but we did! They were playing and were too cute.

At night we saw an aardvark. Then we ate dinner with our group again at night and tried to call Bianca (our phone didn't work though, sad), and went to sleep.

Day 8

Today was our last day and our last safari at 6:30am. The Brazilians skipped it completely, but the rest of us were there. And I'm glad we did because we saw some Hippos swimming today! That was new and cool. besides the usual suspects, we also saw a zebra super close. Some impalas greeted us when we arrived back at the resort.

We ate some breakfast (those omelets were the best EVER) and hung out in our room until it was time to leave. They took us to the airport, we went through like no security there, and then off to Capetown we went!

our room

For some reason our flight to Capetown was delayed an hour? Who knows what happened, but we had no way of telling our Capetown driver this info, so we missed out on having a driver. Great. We get to the airport and are super tried from being up early for our safari (AAFFRRIIICCCAAA!), so we don't know what's going on. People are trying to approach us to give us a ride, but we read how dangerous that is, so we didn't do that. Plus we only got a certain amount of money out of the ATM, we didn't wanna get more out, but most taxis wanted at least $10 more than what we had. 

We saw a guy dressed in a suit in the information booth. He came over to us and asked us if we needed help. It was the airport's official info booth too, so we thought we were good talking to him. He said his company could give us a ride, and we believed him. He looked trustworthy enough. So he takes us to a counter and talks to the people behind it really fast. We didn't get much out of it (yes, he was speaking English), but then he's like "ok I'll take them thanks! My boss says we're good to go you just pay me" :-/

At that point we were like craaappp what have we done?? But it was too late. All we could do was sit there and pray like crazy. So he leads us to a car...HIS CAR! No logo or anything on it. Double crap. SO he puts our suitcase in the car and off we go *gulp* uh oh...we held hands and onto each of our doors in case we had to jump out. He kept pointing out different areas too as we went, such as the really poor area and where he lives. Yeah...

We watched the signs and he actually took us to the right place. We were staying at an apartment because that's cheaper than a waterfront hotel actually? Weird. The guy operating the gate looked at the guy suspiciously. Bobby had to get out of the car to sign in and everything and I was TERRIFIED to be alone. All he did was talk about other tours he does and gave me his card, but still! Then he drove us to our building and we ran inside. It ended up alright, but man, that was the scariest thing ever. Never again!

We walked around the waterfront that night, ate some dinner and came back to the apartment to do laundry...yeah. I washed our bug sprayed pants...that had our passports in them. AHHH! We realized it at the last moment after they'd been washing for a while and we were like crap...we just dried them with a hair drier and laid them out on the table praying we could get back to the US ok...oh jeez! Of freaking course!!! I guess this is our "something bad" that happens on every one of our trips, except this is pretty bad...

Day 9

We tried to forget about our passports for the day and spent the morning watching South Africa's American Idol auditions haha. It was funny. Sadly on our 1 day here, it was the worst weather we'd seen so far. It was rainy and windy and just plain crappy out. :( But we went out anyways! We're determined in this family! We walked around the mall some more, ate at a (bad) Mexican restaurant, shopped a bit, and when it stopped raining we walked around outside.

View from the apartment

It was really pretty outside. We had to keep ducking in and out of building when it started to rain, but it worked. We wanted to go on a couple of tours but they were either canceled for the day or all booked up. Boo! So what did we do? Go to the aquarium of course! It had fish from the Atlantic and Indian oceans in it. It was fun, but I got really sad there because I kept thinking how much Bianca would have LOVED this place. Especially the penguin show.

We decided to stay in for the night because we were so sleepy and wet. Oh, our passports were dry at this point, but didn't look that great (but not as bad as we thought they were going to be).

The kitchen

Living room

Day 10

This was our last opportunity to see some of Capetown before we went home (hopefully). Even though they said there was zero visibility, we went up to Table Mountain anyway. it was freezing but so neat! You take a cable car up to the top where you can spend as long as you want to looking around. They have little trails up there and it's really pretty. they also have a gift shop and cafe. We walked around the whole thing pretty much (got an earache from all the wind) and then had some lunch and warmed up in the cafe. I'm glad we got to go. It cleared up a little bit while we were there so we could at least get some pictures of good views.

worst wind ever!

After that we headed to the airport pretty early in case we'd get in trouble for ruining our passports. Oh my goodness I was terrified. So we walk up to the customs guy and he looks at them and scans them and he said "it's not working They're broken." All of a sudden I go into this big frenzy and start telling him that I accidentily washed them and that we had to go back to our little girl and I'm pregnant and I start tearing up. All of a sudden HE LAUGHS!!! He's like calm down, I'm joking! You're fine. Have a safe flight.


AHHHHHH! You don't joke with customs! I thought it was funny afterwards, but at the time I was just trying to calm down. We were going home, yay! So we flew to Dubai, had a layover there where we had fro yo for...breakfast? What ever meal it was at that time of day. We tiredly waited out our layover and we were back in NYC before we knew it, AMEN!

Day 11 on...

The US customs guy joked with us too "what did you go swimming with 'em?" and let us go. Crazy. I worried for nothing I suppose. So we get in line,  hop in a cab to our hotel and sleep! The next morning I flew out to OK to get our little girl, yay!!! After dealing with rude people on the planes (I'm pregnant. Therefore I pee a lot. The idiot next to me wouldn't let me out to pee because the girl sitting next to him was sleeping and he didn't want to wake him up. Plus he made it impossible for me to reach over him to wake her up myself. My bladder thanks you.) I finally got to Denver and then OKC. Bianca was so excited to see mommy. She didn't believe I was really there! She had fun with her grandparents. The funniest story was when Grandma took her to feed the ducks some bread, but when they got to the lake, all of the bread was gone. BIANCA ATE IT ALL, HAHAHAHA! That's our girl! Anyway, at the airport we ate lunch and his parents left. Bianca and I went through the airport where she slept.

The first flight was fine, we had our own row, yay! Plus getting the stroller off the plane was good because people saw that I was alone with her and let me go up front to grab her stroller. Yay Okies! Ok let's compare that to Chicago/NYC people on the next flight. Well first in the airport his mom only packed me size 5 diapers (she's a 4) and had no diaper cover on her, so it falls off in the middle of O'Hare. Yep. Awesome. Then I get on the plane and sit next to these 2 snobby people. Bianca would try to say hi and they'd say nothing. I can understand that, ok cool, you're not a baby person. Well she kept dropping her toys at their feet...and wouldn't get them for her. I had to maneuver her on my lap and reach down awkwardly myself to do it. UGH! And I fed her just the apples from my happy meal and they glared at me. UGH! 

So the next day we go into the city, take our train to our stop, and drive home to Ithaca, happy to be together, yet really exhausted. What a crazy time! Our last big adventure for a while...