Tag: South Africa

Art on Four – family funday!

As we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, we drive A LOT here in Jo’burg. On our travels we often pass an art studio that appears too cool not to visit. Unfortunately, every call we’ve placed ends up unanswered or with no booking spots available. Not this time though!

Art on One is a unique place for families where you paint for social fun rather than instruction. You pay by canvas size and are given two hours to complete your painting, drink coffee, eat treats or go outside and play on their great playground.

It turned out to be a beautiful and warm sunny day for our visit. Claire & Rhys love being creative so we knew this would be a big hit with them. Jimmy even joined in the painting fun. We spent a very fun and leisurely two hours painting several canvases, leaving us plenty of time to run around outside with the kids while the paint dried. What a great Saturday!

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Gold Reef City

When it comes to family fun time, a visit to a traditional amusement park is near the bottom of our to-do list. The thought of enduring long line-ups and rude people, etc. is not appealing to us.
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Recently, my company’s CEO showed me pictures of HIS visit to a local park and it looked really fun, in contrast to our preconceptions. Knowing he brought his daughter and she enjoyed the rides coaxed us into giving it a go.
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Built upon an old mine site, Gold Reef City offers a glimpse into history as well as traditional amusement. Restored older buildings still stand, mine shafts can still be toured and a museum touts vintage equipment, etc. Nestled between all the education are rides suited for both the tame and the daring. An adjoining little kids area proved perfect for avoiding energetic hordes of thrill-seekers. The line-ups were manageable and although Claire & Rhys were timid at first they ended up having a lot of fun testing out rides just their size… even a roller-coaster. Our kids are becoming quite courageous in their adventuring! We imagine we’ll end up visiting Gold Reef City again as the kids sure enjoyed it –maybe even as much as us adults.
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Rhys and his many funny faces:22 23
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Claire tired & ready for a break:
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Mid-Point of our African Adventure

Here we are half way through our African Adventure. It has been quite the trip so far full of ups and downs. Years from now I am sure we will reflect on how amazing this opportunity was for our family.

  • We have successfully found public access parks and other neat destinations around the city.
  • We have navigated ourselves around a heavily populated and huge city (27th largest in the world in fact) – Important to note that Jimmy just received his drivers license one week prior to our departure from Canada. He is the one who does all the driving in Johannesburg. Go Jimmy!
  • Jimmy has done an amazing job at finding himself some cool skate spots and is always on the hunt for pools to skate.
  • We have found a rhythm for our family in a strange new place.
  • We have become accustomed to living with very few personal belongings. We each brought one bag of clothes and have not bought very much during our time here. This has been very freeing for me. It puts more focus on what is really important in life.
  • We have learned to cope with my frequent departures from the family to work in Botswana.
  • Claire & Rhys have developed so much while we have been in Africa in physical and emotional growth. They are very adaptable kids who are wonderful travelers. Like Jimmy and I, the kids enjoy the excitement of travel and adventure; wanderlust. They both like to colour and draw. They are little artists indeed! They love spending time outdoors and using sticks to draw in the dirt or drive their monster trucks and diggers through the dirt. We have running races everywhere and they are very competitive with each other. They love kicking around a soccer ball and going on walks. They attend preschool 5 days out of the week for 1/2 days. This was something new for us as in Canada they attended a preschool 2 days/ week for 2 hours.
  • We have had some amazing day and overnight trips. The Safari in Madikwe was a definite highlight.

All this said, we do look forward to returning home. We miss our friends and our family. We can live a free life in Canada that isn’t really possible in Joburg.

We have a few more fun adventures planned which will be really fun so stay tuned!

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Jaci’s Tree Lodge- Madikwe Game Reserve

When most people think of Africa they think of the vast wildlife and the impressive safaris. It isn’t everyday that someone has the opportunity to experience African wildlife, so we budgeted on doing so. We decided to do a luxury safari rather than a self-drive type as we have never been on a real family vacation and it has been challenging living here in Africa with all my work rotations to Botswana etc. We deserved a well earned break. After searching for child friendly lodges we decided to do a safari in the Madikwe Game Reserve which is a 4 hour drive from Johannesburg and is located in the North West province of South Africa where it borders Botswana to the North. It is a malaria-free reserve so it makes it a great kid-friendly choice.

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We found the perfect place, Jaci’s Tree Lodge. They gave a us a stellar deal for two nights as it is Winter in South Africa and not the high-season for them. The lodge was built into the trees which was very fun for the kids and Jimmy (it reminded him of the Ewok Village in Star Wars). The staff were great and attentive. They were so good to the kids. It did get cold in the evenings and the lodge was mostly open air so we stayed cozy with lots of layers and hot water bottles. The food was very yummy and very English with tea service and brunch rather than lunch. I suppose it reflects back to British Colonial times.

Day 1- Arrival:

We had a very slow start to our departure from Johannesburg- our vehicle battery was dead after we loaded in the luggage and the kids into their car seats. My companies CEO lent us his company SUV and we left it sitting in our parking garage for a month without starting it. Oops. That was frustrating for us but we managed to get going and after a long four hour drive we arrived in time for the first night safari drive. Seeing as Jimmy rarely has time to himself while we are here in South Africa I was happy for him to go solo on the first drive (as kids are not allowed on the 3 hour safari drives so I stayed back with the kids). He had enough time to unload the SUV and give us quick hugs and kisses. This left the kids & I plenty of time to wonder the trails and check out the lodge. We met Jimmy for a late dinner where he told us his stories from his drive and showed us the amazing photos he captured. We made plans for the next days early morning game drive which was to start at 6:30am. We all fell asleep that night to the sound of crickets, monkeys and other animals that lived around our tree house.

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Day 2:

The safari guide woke us up the next morning with a light tap on our door. While the kids slept Jimmy was able to make it to the lodge to make some coffee and bring it back to the room for me and snacks for the kids before he departed on his morning safari drive. The amount of animals he saw during his drive was really great. They had a mid-way rest stop at some caves where they enjoyed coffee outside. We met for a late brunch which was so nice. They hosted us on the large patio that had stairs leading down to some trails. Brunch was a long affair so the kids were able to go down the steps and safely play while we sipped coffee- bliss! Our safari guide informed us that the kids jungle drive that we booked wasn’t necessary as we would be the only guests for the afternoon game drive so they would allow us to bring the kids along. Yay! Rather than a 45 minute kids jungle drive we would be able to experience a 3 hour drive with the kids. Lucky us! After brunch we visited the amenities at the lodge- a pool and a look-out over a water hole. We headed back to our room for an outside showers and a little nap before we had to depart on the game drive.  The evening drive was great. We saw a herd of elephants!, zebras, lions, kudu, impala, giraffes, etc. The kids did wonderful even though the ride was very bumpy. Half-way through the drive we had a rest stop with drinks and snacks which recharged Claire & Rhys for the rest of the drive. On our way back to the lodge for dinner Rhys fell asleep in my arms. The had such a great day 🙂 Dinner was yummy yet again and our safari guide joined us this time so we were able to ask her plenty of questions. A perfect day.

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27C/W: Lilac-Breasted Roller, Crested Barbet, Red-billed Hornbill & Southern Carmine Bee-eater:

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Claire asked us to take a photo of her here so she could ‘remember it forever’:39

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Day 3- Departure:

On our last day at the lodge we woke up early again but this time with the kids in tow. We dressed in several layers as it is freezing in the early morning before the sun comes out. It was just our family again in the game drive vehicle as we drove to the southern portion of the park. Our mission was to find some Rhinos. Jimmy saw two on his first game drive but I have never seen one in the wild so I was excited. We didn’t see a lot of animals prior to our mid-drive break. It was so nice to get out of the safari vehicle and run around with the kids, have some coffee & hot cocoa. It re-energized us all and the sun was out so it started to warm up. Shortly after our break we located a Rhino! I was so excited. After watching it graze for a long time we headed back to the lodge. Claire & Rhys both fell asleep in our arms and Jimmy & I soaked up the sun and marveled at how great this trip was for our family. We had a nice brunch when we arrived back to the lodge and packed up our SUV for the long ride home.

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The trip was amazing and one we will never forget 🙂

Bunny Park, Benoni

Recently, we read about a park full of bunnies that was in the nearby suburb of Benoni. It was a nice warm day when we visited and although we weren’t completely impressed by the park itself, the kids did have fun with all of the bunnies and we had some good play time. It made for a solid weekend adventure.

Its always nice to find more public parks to visit that are relatively safe.

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Morninghill Green Park

In South Africa the fear of the unknown is always present. Many Johannesburg neighborhoods go so far as to block of certain roads that lead into their areas. They’ll hire a security guard who monitors the one singular main entrance exclusively, taking down license plate numbers, etc. Seeing as this pooling of funds and hiring of security is often privately done, it makes for lots of unmarked dead-ends and unexpected U-turns while driving around. One day, we noticed an unmanned gate and opted to drive in without ill intention. We left without incident after a nice walk. It was very pretty and very quiet and we made some nice conversation with the other people who also chose to stroll on this day.

 

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St. Margaret’s Anglican Church

If you haven’t noticed by now, Jimmy is our family photographer. This lovely church is in our neighborhood and the early morning light is quite charming. It was very peaceful the day we stopped by to take photographs. The building was really well-maintained and I think Jimmy captured the mood and architecture nicely.

 

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Coming home

My rotational work schedule in Botswana takes me away from my family for two weeks at a time and then I come home and spend a week with them before I head back to Botswana for more work. It has been manageable and Jimmy is such an amazing husband and Dad that he holds everything together when I am away working.

The best part of rotational work abroad? Coming home and having my family meet me at the airport:

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