Tim turned 30 on Saturday. I can’t believe it. However, I think the 30’s will treat him well. He has been coaching college kiddos since he left college himself. There has never been much of an age gap between his athletes and him. That 30-something title may give him some extra something-something with his athletes. I think for the most part he gets the respect due to his coaching position because he demands it. Tim is out there lifting every day and is a good example to his athletes. He explains why they are doing these lifts and stretches. I have seen him in action at a couple of his universities now and the athletes like him. They seem to understand that he has their best interest at heart. He is trying to make them stronger, more flexible, and faster so they can decrease their chance of injury and increase their chance of winning. The science behind what he does every day is mind blowing. The athletes wear GPS trackers and Tim can tell if one of his athletes is favoring a side, not running as fast or as much as he normally would, etc. He downloads the readings for each player after practices and games and analyzes the information and then translates it for the basketball coaching staff. He also does force plate training for the athletes to help them with their jumping ability. The science behind it all is pretty crazy. I am always blown away when he shows me his work. Strength and Conditioning coaches (sports performance coaches) jobs have changed so much in the last decade or two. Everything is so specialized and scientific. All this being said, I can’t tell you how proud I am of the work Tim does. He is excelling in his field on so many levels….getting calls from other coaches wanting advice. To say that I am proud of him is a total understatement. Do I think he works too hard and needs to have a life outside of work? Yes, but that is my mama bear voice talking.

Tim was born in Mississippi. Rich was in pilot training at Columbus AFB, MS while I was still on active duty at Scott AFB, IL, near St. Louis – on the Illinois side. When the Air Force decided they would rather send me to the country of Turkey after I gave birth to my second child (I already had a 22-month-old son – Joe), we decided I should separate from the Air Force so we could be stationed together again. At 6 months pregnant, I sold our duplex and packed up our two labs and our toddler first born son, and drove down to Columbus, MS to join Rich. It was soooo hot in Mississippi that summer. Being largely pregnant with horrible heartburn didn’t help. I walked several miles a day pushing Joe in the stroller down to the flight line so he could wave to “Daddy” (every man in a plane taxiing by was Daddy). I took to chewing 10-12 trays of ice a day, trying to ease the heartburn. One night, I figured out I thought I might have a slow leak of amniotic fluid. Joe was sick with a fever. Rich took me into the ER and dropped me off as it was confirmed I indeed had a slow leak. I would be induced in the morning. Rich dropped Joe off with another fellow pilot’s wife and came in the morning. I remember it looked like the first nice day since I had moved to Mississippi. The humidity was lower and the temps had dropped Hades to just the first ring of Hell. My OB dr was, of course, golfing. He came back around noon and Tim made his entrance into the world….covered in orange fur up and down his back and reddish blonde hair that covered his ears and went down the length of his neck. The nursery nurses marveled at his hair. We were discharged 24 hours later and when my parents showed up another 24 hours after that, my dad’s first exclamation when he saw his second grandson was, “That boy needs a haircut already!” Tim was an old soul as a baby. He would just sit and take in everything around him. Countless people said that about him. He was just soaking up all around him.

Growing up, Tim and Joe were inseparable. We moved to northwestern Minnesota when Tim was about 7 months old. We lived in that house for 3 years and then moved on base in North Dakota for a year. The summers are mosquito-filled, and the winters are really long and bitterly cold. There was a lot of indoor time where the boys were together playing. Joe was my ginger with brown eyes…Tim was my firecracker redhead with blue eyes. Tim got all the recessive genes as he is also left-handed. Tim was always asking questions…. stumping me while I drove him here and there. He seemed to slow down enough to have conversations in the car and had so many questions. He loved putting together puzzles when he was very young (and still does to this day). My father-in-law was watching him do this when he was about 2 years old and had him put together a 50-piece puzzle upside down where he couldn’t see the patterns. Tim did it easily and my father-in-law told me right then and there that I better keep this boy engaged and learning or he would get into trouble. Tim loved looking for worms and I remember one night trying to bring in a pail of earthworms he had found throughout the afternoon. He told me they would be lonely without him. I told him their parents might be worried if they didn’t come home that night. The worms were dumped under a bush to find their way home.

Tim started reading about age 3 1/2. I was working with Joe on learning sounds and spelling and phonetics, etc. Little did we know at that time that Joe was dyslexic. Tim was quietly listening and watching as we wrote on a bit dry erase board. I went to get Joe a drink and I heard Tim laughing hysterically. I came back into the room and Tim had written “cat but” on the whiteboard. He had this infectious giggle and just couldn’t stop laughing. When he went to preschool at age 4 in Colorado Springs, he was incredibly shy. When I told his teacher he could read, she had him read to the class after recess a couple of times a week. In the photo below, my mother-in-law is reading to Joe, Tim, and their cousin, Casey. Tim is correcting a reading mistake his Nana has made. Yep, keep him busy!

Tim ended up skipping kindergarten and going to 1st grade. Thankfully, he had a year of karate at that point. He had to be tested to go to 1st grade. We met with the kindergarten teacher and even though Tim was painfully shy, he went up to the teacher and looked her in the eyes and said, “Hello, I am Tim.” This was something required of him at karate class…. shaking the hands of all the adults and higher-ranking belts each class. It kinda blew the teacher away. Then she started asking him to read and write and do math problems. She said she was sure he would be more challenged in 1st grade. He ended up in TAG classes for the next few years in Colorado at an international baccalaureate school where he learned French. When we moved to Okinawa, Japan, he excelled in Japanese partial immersion classes. Languages seemed to be his forte. We then moved to Norway and another international baccalaureate school at the International School of Stavanger. He was in middle school there….6th -8th grade. He learned to play the alto saxophone and play the snare drum. Tim took Spanish and Norwegian classes. His last year in Norway, they asked to challenge him and put him in Norwegian classes for native speakers. Tim had gotten into school sports by then and knew that once we left Norway, his Norwegian wouldn’t exactly be useful in the U.S. He took Norwegian 3 instead and skated through the class. He played baseball and soccer but learned he had a passion for rugby and for basketball. He played in international tournaments in both of those sports. When we were assigned back to the U.S. and moved to Nebraska, Tim was starting his freshman year. He was playing basketball all year round and loving it. His new high school had no idea where to place him in Spanish…and as a freshman, I got a call from his Spanish 3 teacher saying that he could probably be in Spanish 5 with all the seniors. A younger than everyone else fresheman, who has lived in Asia and Europe the last five years, placed in with 18 year olds? Nope. He got to skate through Spanish classes in the U.S. as well. He took student athletic training classes and culinary arts classes. He busted his tail to get a really good ACT score and his pick of full rides to several different midwestern schools. He chose University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I thought he might get lost in such a huge Big 10 school, but he thrived there. He played rugby for several years and started doing internships with Husker Power. Tim approached the women’s basketball strength and conditioning coach during this time and asked to work with him, as Tim admired the work he saw him doing with his athletes. I will never forget the conversation Tim conveyed to me with that coach. The coach asked him to name 5 female basketball coaches in the U.S. He also asked him to tell him what podcasts he was listening to on basketball, rehab, and strength and conditioning. Tim realized he needed to up his game if he was going to be able to work with basketball teams. This coach and that conversation changed Tim. That coach, one of his mentors, now calls Tim to talk to his interns and teach them. They actually had teams who played against each other a couple of years back. Tim has pushed himself to be great in his field because of this mentor. Cool story.

Once Tim graduated, he ended up moving to Colorado to help open a kick boxing gym while he worked remotely on his master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning from Concordia University in Chicago. Tim moved to Morgantown, West Virginia to do an internship at WV. He was there about 7 months before he was picked up for a job as a strength and conditioning coach as Stanford University. It was there he started to ask both the men’s and women’s basketball strength and conditioning coaches if he could help out with their teams during his team’s down seasons. Both of them took them under their wings and helped teach him higher level collegiate basketball basics for athletes in the sports performance arena. Two more mentors that Tim really feels he owes a lot to. He then got picked up as the women’s basketball sports performance coach at University of California San Diego. He was there for two years and then transitioned to men’s basketball at Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC. After a year, he went back to UCSD and was hired to coach the men’s team. He has been there since June and is loving it.

Tim as an adult is a joy. He enjoys travelling and learning and going to rugby games with his mom. When the international 7’s tournament was in Las Vegas, Tim and I went every year for about 5-6 years. We always had a blast. He enjoys national parks and coming up to Montana and kayaking or rafting or hiking or whatever we throw at him.

Happy 30th birthday, Tim! I always enjoy talking sports with you and hearing about your adventures. May your 30’s treat you well. Love you to pieces and so very proud of you!

We have had a few things happen over the last few weeks but I was waiting for my medical appointment today before I started my post.

First things first….Rich and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on August 17th. That is a long time. Although many of our close friends have been celebrating similar anniversaries, we know there are many who called it quits years ago. We have been through some thrilling adventures and some rock bottom lows. Throughout that rollercoaster ride, there has been a common thread of love and respect for each other. Do we drive each other crazy sometimes? Oh yes. But at the end of the day, I can’t think of a better person to be my ride or die friend and confidant. We drove about 45 minutes south of here and stayed in a lodge on Swan Lake. No TV. No phone service. No internet. We kayaked and got a solid night’s sleep before heading back to our home.

Cyndi and Rich Messina – newlyweds 17 Aug 91 in Alexandria, VA

35 years later, kayaking on Swan Lake

We joked about the fact that when we were first married, our plan was to retire in Alaska. Rich would fly me in his bush plane in and out of the remote towns for me to be a midwife there. Instead, we are in Montana, where Rich drives be to medical calls as an EMT. Step down? Maybe. But I wouldn’t have it any other way!

We did some exploring to Spotted Bear this summer as well. This is a lot of back country driving. It was a beautiful day though!

I also had a very good friend come and stay a few days with us. Kathy and I were diagnosed with cancer about a week apart. We were already good friends from our Church in Ralston, Nebraska…then we were fighting together…losing our hair together…and then growing it back together. She now lives in Virginia Beach but was traveling through Montana on her way to see her girls in Washington state. She stopped in and stayed a couple of days. We showed her around the area and Glacier National Park and got her a huckleberry ice cream cone (if you know, you know!). We sat on the front porch in our rocking chairs and talked for hours about EVERYTHING. It was good for my soul.

Another photo that I happened to catch this summer on my front porch that I absolutely love….

And the last photo is the double rainbow over our volunteer fire department at training one night this summer…

Okay…now for the health update. As most of you know, I carry around a pretty large tumor load. One of the tumors in my pelvis (not the biggest one), decided to stop behaving after 6 years of being stable. I talked to my local oncologist and asked to be scanned at three months rather than 6…which was in Feb of this year. Still growing. Not real fast, but enough to warrant action. I contacted my sarcoma specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. We flew there within a few weeks to figure out my options. Surgery was going to be very intensive, and I would not come out of surgery to recover to the active person I am now. That was out. We talked to the radiologist, and she believed they could target my tumor. The problem was I had a trip planned and paid for to Africa in June. It was the end of April at this point. The radiologist felt I was healthy enough to handle having 3 weeks of high intensity radiation (15 days of treatment) vs the regular radiation for 5 weeks. That would give me time to recover before leaving for Africa. Honestly, you don’t want to get sick overseas…so I was willing to do it. I was given 3 pages of side effects to look for with some being very unpleasant. I was so very blessed that I really only felt bloated in my pelvis and was a little more tired than usual. I think I managed 2 naps during those 3 weeks. (I am not a napper.) Anyhow, no major side effects and I went to Africa and had a great time communing with the elephants and rhinos…with a few giraffes, hippos, and lions thrown in there as well. I had my scans repeated about 10 days ago. I had to wait a few months after radiation because there is an automatic response of swelling of the tissue that is being radiated – whether it is tumor or healthy tissue. We needed to wait until the swelling went down. My scans showed everything else being the same and the troublesome tumor growing minimally. That wasn’t the news I wanted to hear, but I wasn’t too spun up about it as there were 6 months between the scan results. The minimal growth could have been in the three months between the scans in Feb and the radiation in May. OR…I could still have some swelling. I met with the radiation oncology NP today and she is also not really concerned. We decided we would wait another 3 months or so and then repeat the scans then. That would give us a true understanding if the radiation worked to stunt the growth of the tumor. Due to the Thanksgiving holiday and the NP going on vacation, I will be scanned the week of Dec 7th and meet back with her on Dec 14th. That means I will go into 2027 with life as usual or getting ready for chemo. That will be next year’s problem. Right now I am going to move forward with the freedom that I have the rest of the year to stop worrying about this. Tim arrives at the end of the week and I am looking forward to enjoying time with him.

Okay folks. I have spent the majority of the last four days going through 2275 photos I took on my good camera on our latest trip to Africa. I developed a little over 600 of the photos. I am going to share some of them here. Enjoy!

I have stage IV leiomyosarcoma. I was diagnosed in October of 2019. It was likely that I had it in 2015 when I had a hysterectomy with a large benign (so they thought) tumor removed. I wasn’t given a lot of hope back in 2019. My first chemo cocktail nearly killed me because my then oncologist was not listening to my side effects…and I was having a rare allergic reaction to one of the chemicals they were pumping into my body. I lost my hair….my golden glow I always had turned a sickly grayish-yellow. I was put on high dose steroids for 5 weeks. I gained almost 30 pounds during that time. All those 0500 gym and kickboxing classes that I had worked so hard in – all that work to tone my body and keep it healthy – went out the window. Then the next chemo in the regimen to try and buy me time. They were quite clear there would be no cure. Aside from a freak accident, this cancer would eventually kill me….even though the cancer never really gave me any signs and symptoms….the treatment was what was so awful. My second chemo gave me chemical burns along my bra line that even made my oncologist flinch. My hands and feet were red and blistered. I kept walking during this time (now that I could breathe again) – with socks under my bra straps around my chest because the pain was so horrible. I had second skin gel patches between my toes with band aids to keep them in place. I was still on steroids around chemo time (as most cancer patients are) to help with the nausea and the exhaustion. Funny enough, I always got so much done those first 48 hours after chemo because the steroids wouldn’t let me sleep…and they kept me feeling like I was always hungry. After a year on this second chemo, my sarcoma specialist told me my body needed a chemo break. I had been on chemo for over 15 months at that point and the second kind of chemo I had been on had kept things stable but it would eventually weaken my heart and we needed to stop it before that happened. I suggested aromatase inhibitors (I had my tumor slides they had stored at the hospital tested to see if it was estrogen positive and progesterone positive. It was highly positive for both…meaning it was feeding off of my female hormones…so we cut them out of my body. I started getting shots monthly to kill my ovary (I only had one left – encased in an inoperable tumor) and any other female hormone creating entity in my body. I then started the little devil pills. It was amazing at how much havoc this tiny white pill I took once a day could cause to my body. My body hurt so badly. I would stiffen up after sitting for just a minute or two. Someone whom I love dearly told me that I should be so happy to be off chemo…but I was much worse off at this point. My body had rebelled against me and at age 50, I felt like 90. I have since met people who have tried the pill I am on and they lasted less than a month before calling it quits. I had helpful friends who had suggestions of mega doses of vitamin C….red ultraviolet light therapy…cutting all sugar from my diet. Funny how they assumed they had the answers…that I had not done my homework on my own kind of cancer…one that is rare and not well understood. I was given 17-23% chance to live 5 years. I found a helpful supplement (natural with no side effects) that dropped the pain level down 85%. It was a game changer for me. I watched as friend after friend on my online LMS group died. Many younger than me. We had a group of four of us women from all over who were diagnosed about the same time. There are two of us left in that group now. The youngest of us didn’t make it.

When my Joe died in 2022, I railed. I would have no matter what my life circumstance was…I was a mother who had lost her child. I will never get over that. Ever. How can you expect me to? But most of all I was furious with God. I was ready to go. I had been facing my own mortality for 3 years at that point and had finally dug myself out of a deep depression and grief what I wouldn’t have for my own life. I was living goal to goal at that point…make it to 50…make it to Joe and Michelle’s wedding…make it to this trip….make it to Lily’s high school graduation…make it to see Tim be on the courts of a D1 college basketball team, living his dream. Why would God take my son, who was just hitting his sweet spot in his life, away and not me? Joe has been dead for over 4 years now. I stopped being mad about 6 months ago. It didn’t matter what people said to me, I was mad. He deserved to live and I was okay with giving my life up instead of his. I would do it in a second…for any of my kids. Most moms would. Another deep depression and grief that covered me completely ensued. I don’t think very many people in my life knew the depths of that depression and the length of it. Other moms who had lost their kid or kids became my circle. Most people I still had around after the cancer diagnosis, those I must be cursed when Joe died. They just stepped away like my bad luck was contagious. I let them. Then I got mad. Mad at the people who failed to speak a word to me when I needed them most. We moved to Montana and that was a good time to make a culling of the “friends” who expected me to carry on the communication. I started over and carried over those who reached out. It was never the people I thought it would be…it rarely is, come to find out. I threw myself into creating a life in Montana – in a home I love with the people I chose to spend time with. I became a homebody not because COVID or cancer forced me to, but because it is my safe haven. I don’t go out much, and that is hard because I am married to someone who is a social butterfly and needs to be out and about amongst people. Thankfully, he has started doing things out on his own and doesn’t force me to be in large settings anymore. I never know when something will trigger me and I will lose it. I prefer to do that in private and not with a bunch of business people at a chamber of commerce event. This is not at all who I used to be. It is my reality now, and Rich is trying to respect that (or he has given up on me – I haven’t really asked him.) I attend cancer support groups online every other week (where it is uncomfortable for everyone to talk about my grief for the loss of my Joe) and then I am in a mother’s child loss group every other week (where I feel I can’t talk about my cancer diagnosis because some of them lost their adult children to cancer and it is triggering). It is a freaking fine line that I walk in these groups and it is hard.

The reason I decided to type this (now that I am a couple of long paragraphs in already) is because I had a particularly cathartic meeting with my metastatic cancer group this past week. Due to confidentiality issues, I am just going to do some broad strokes as to what was talked about. None of the guys showed up…it was just 5 ladies from all over Montana – ages 50-65 would be my guess. We ran the gambit of topics. We talked about tragic optimism (“the ability to maintain hope and find purpose despite inescapable pain, loss, and hardship.”). None of us will be getting better. We all have side effects from surgeries, the cancer itself, treatment, etc., and our new “normal” isn’t what our old normal was. We can’t walk back time and have the same bodies we had before…have the same thoughts…even the same dreams. We can have hope…but hope looks different. Hope isn’t a cure or a toned and sculpted tight body. Hope is being able to go on a long walk and not have to take a nap afterwards. Hope for me is getting to continue being an EMT and firefighter to serve my community and my department. Unrealistic hope leads to despair. Toxic positivity (either from myself or usually from others) leads to that tragic optimism.

I have had a lot of alone time lately. Rich has been gone two of the last three weeks traveling and spending time with his side of the family. I have been thinking alot about about facing my own pride and vanity. As recently as 6.5 years ago, I was working out 5 days a week and was in pretty good shape. I was toned and tan and had naturally light blonde hair. Cancer and the chemo therapy I was on those first 15 months changed all of that. I gained weight. I lost all my hair and it came back in a strange brownish color with red highlights. My weight ballooned and my entire body became something I couldn’t recognize as my own. The sisterhood of body shaming hit me hard. I felt that no matter what kind of person I was on the inside or projected, I was seen as a fat slob by everyone. We talked and all of us cried over this in my cancer zoon this week. We had all been so active before our treatment took our bodies and our lives and turned them pearshaped. (literally). We all talked about how we had once been fit and active and now we were being looked at in public as fatties – with no one knowing that it was due in good part to our treatment. No one cares why you are fat. There was a young man I met at our fire department who really body shamed me. He never came out directly and said anything to my face, but really made me feel worthless for a long time…until I was on a medical call and was doing all the things I needed to be doing to help. He, along with my own discouraging inner voice, was robbing me of my power and purpose. I have people around me who are taking these weight-loss shots and dropping huge amounts of weight quickly. There are people close to me who gossip about other people’s weight when they aren’t around, so I know in my heart of hearts, they are gossiping about mine. That is hard, because these are some of the people I am closest to. Don’t you think I would like to have a body like I used to ? I would. My oncologist (who is a wisp of a woman) told me the first time I met her that the drugs I am on will really prevent me from losing weight…no matter what I do.

I am writing this out so I can read it again when I need to. My body is a survivor. I saw a meme the other day (and I hope you don’t get these memes, but thanks to having cancer and being a part of cancer groups, I see these) – “I don’t care how I look in photos anymore. I just want to look good in ultrasounds, CT scans, and MRIs.” AMEN! Those are what matters right now. I am tired of hiding outside of photos anymore because of how I look. I would hope that someday my kids would like to see photos of me in my last years…no matter what I look like, just because maybe they want to see my smile…or simply because they loved me for who I was, fat and all. I am trying to take a healthier approach mentally right now, which is where I think I need the most work. I don’t know how much longer I have. I am already living on borrowed, blessed time. Why should I turn down things I love to eat? Eating it won’t kill me and dieting won’t save me. So if you see me out in public eating a cookie. Slow your roll. I am getting joy in something. Don’t judge me and don’t steal my joy. People who suck the joy out of my life are quickly cut from my tightening tribe. It is amazing when you don’t have a whole life time to live, what you are willing to cut from your life if it doesn’t bring you joy and isn’t worth the hassle. I have been taught by my family…by the public…my whole life that looks matter. I totally bought into that for the first 45 years of my life. Now I am in a different position and I am trying to relearn how to love myself in this new body that I don’t love. I will start with what I do love. I love that this body has been fighting for almost 7 years now. I love that it keeps me healthy enough to be a part of a higher calling as a firefighter and EMT. I love that my mind is still sharp (although I sometimes struggle with words when speaking – thank you chemo and grief brain). I am thankful that although I carry a large tumor load around with me – most people who meet me would not have any idea I have terminal cancer. They treat me like everyone else and I appreciate that.

Well, that is a lot of words to say that I am 55 and still learning. I am trying to live a good and full life and not beat myself up for what I can’t do or what I look like. I am still here. I am fighting to stay as long as I can and live a productive life for as long as I can. I am crushing it so far. If you are still reading…thanks for listening to me ramble about something I think about ALL THE TIME. Blessings to you all…and I hope YOU are in a good place. I am still working on it. I am a total work in progress.

On our last days in Cape Town, we spent time at the Wharf and went on the Hop On Hop Off Bus around the coast. We went to some of the same places we had been before but also went to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens…which were spectacular. Even though it was wintertime, everything was lush and green. I was told that where the gardens are located in relation to Tabletop Mountain, they get 2x the amount of rain as other areas. We had another dinner at a local family’s home in Cape Town. Gail and Trevor were awesome hosts, and they talked quite a bit about the Apartheid years when they were growing up and how different it is now for their children (who are young adults). Rich went back to Smith’s Town to go cage diving with the sharks. There was a Bryde’s whale which played around their ship for quite a while. Rich said the crew on the boat said it was pretty special. We had fish and chips while at Hout’s Bay. There was a hungry seagull who wouldn’t leave Rich’s side. All in all, it was a fabulous trip to Africa. I will be going through my photos on my good camera in the next couple of weeks. I am hoping for some good shots!

During one of our last days in Cape Town, we spent time driving around the western coast of South Africa. We got to go to Simon’s Town, a naval town. The RSA navy has a fleet of 30 ships total and the only war they were ever in was WWII in support of the British fighting the allies.(as it was a British protectorate at that time). We stopped briefly at Hout’s Bay to see the swimming seals. We also got to see the lighthouse in South Africa, the Old Cape Point Lighthouse, built in 1860. We took the Flying Dutchman funicular railway to reach the lighthouse and see spectacular views and then walked the 20 minutes down. The lighthouse is really high up which makes it somewhat ineffective as a lighthouse. There are shipwrecks off the coast to prove that fact. We saw the African Penguin colony affectionately called the “jackass” penguins because they sound like braying donkeys. They mate for life and live 10-15 years. They typically hatch 2 chicks at a time and they are downy until they are about 2 months old where they shed their down feathers and grow their adult feathers. The penguins haven’t always been there. They showed up in 1983 and started laying eggs. There is now a 500-700 penguin population there. We also saw the 12 Apostles, a mountainous formation along the coast. We had the pleasure of going to the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwestern point of the continent of Africa. We also got to take a drive on Chapman’s Peak Drive, a 9 km coastal road from Noordhoek to Hout Bay. It has 114 curves and the Atlantic Ocean views are breathtaking. It is often considered one of the more photographed routes in the world. We saw baboons and ostriches along with the penguins. It was quite an eclectic group of animals on the Cape!

Here is where I talk a bit about the folks we traveled with. We had a group of 7 folks from Texas (3 from Houston and 4 from the Dallas/Fort Worth area – the 3 from Houston live just a couple of miles from my parents! Small world!) and we had a family of 4 adults from the Detroit area. These folks we fun to travel with and we became friends after traveling for 14 days together.

Just Nuisance a South African Great Dane who lived in Simon’s Town between 1937 and 1944. He befriended the Royal Navy and was honorably enlisted into the Royal Navy. He was often found watching over “his sailors”. He only lived 7 years when he died and was buried with full military honors. This statue was placed with love overlooking the bay in Simon’s Town, where he lived with his Navy friends. It is part of Jubilee Square downtown and is a highly photographed statue.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed Cape Town. I loved the hotel we stayed in and I enjoyed looking at Table Top Mountain every day. Although we were warned about the crime in the area, we were told it was safe to walk around the area as long as we paid attention to our appearance and our surroundings. We rode the cable car up to the top of Table Top mountain. It was really spectacular. The little furry animals on the side of the top of the mountain are called dassies – or rock hyraxes.

We went to a city park in Cape Town and then around the city proper. We stopped at the Wharf as well, which was close to our hotel, so spent several days exploring that area.

One of our last nights in Cape Town, we went out to eat at a wonderful restaurant called Gold Restaurant. It wasn’t just good African food, it was an EXPERIENCE. Our faces were painted…we all had a drumming lesson for about 30 minutes and there was lots of good African music and dancing.

After our time in Pilanesberg, we drove four hours back to Johannesburg and then flew to Cape Town, South Africa, on the far southwestern coast of the continent. Our guide had some time to talk to us more about South Africa’s recent history, which I am going to share here.

Nelson Mandela was born July 18th, 1918. His father died when he was young and he was raised by his uncle. He wanted to be a lawyer but ended up as a security guard for awhile before college before coming a professional warrior. Mahatma Ghandi inspired Nelson to be a politician. He was soon labeled a troublemaker. He was arrested in 19642 and charged with treason and sentenced to a lifetime in prison. He served 27 years. He spent 18 years on Robben Island in a damp concrete cell that was 8 x 7 feet with a straw mat to sleep on. He spent his days breaking rocks which led to the breakdown of his eyesight due to the glare of the limestone. He worked on his law degree by correspondence by night from the University of London. He was permitted one visit and one letter every six months. In 1968, Nelson’s mother died and then his oldest son died in a car accident shortly thereafter. He was not allowed to go to either funeral. In 1975, he began his autobiography and it was smuggled to London. It was not published at the time. In 1982, Nelson was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Tokai, Cape Town. In 1988, he was moved to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. He had much more freedom there and worked to finish his degree. In February 1990, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and made his famous speech at Cape Town City Hall calling for forgiveness, a reconciliation with the whites and a commitment to peace. This speech was televised across the world and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. Many white South Africans fled the country thinking that a civil war would break out and their lives would be in danger. Four years later Nelson Mandela would become the first black South African president. (something he stated he would do in 1952). Mandela was married 3 times and fathered 6 children and had 17 grandchildren. His children had no interest in following in his political footsteps and most live in quiet anonymity in the Johannesburg area.

Our only bad weather day was our day in the wine country…which was fine. We walked around the town of Franschhoek, admiring the many art galleries and large pieces of art they had in the area.

We stopped by the prison where Nelson Mandela was released from….which is still a maximum security prison today.

Our first wine farm (yes, that is what they are called – wine farms) was Fairfax Wine Farm. Both of the wineries we went to were in the Somerset area. At Fairfax, they paired their wines with different kinds of cheeses. Fairview wine farm started in 1693.

Our next wine farm was had lunch at and had chocolates with the wine. This was Webersburg Estate in Stellenbosch, also founded in 1693.

After being in Botswana for a few days, we drove back to Zimbabwe and then flew to Johannesburg. We then drove about 4 hours to Pilanesberg National Park. They have the Big Five there for wildlife and the game reserve is a 150,000-acre area centered on a caldera of an extinct volcano. They had a large rhino population there and we got to see a lot of white rhino, although there are also black rhino as well. Know the difference? It isn’t the color. They are both dark gray. The white rhinos tend to have their heads down and and have flat mouths and lips. They tend to keep their young in front of them and defend them from behind. The black rhinos have a pointed upper lip, they tend to keep their heads up and they guard their young from the front. They are more aggressive. This was special for us because we did not see rhinos very close when we were in Kenya and Tanzania two years ago. They were so far away you could barely tell they were rhinos with strong binoculars. That wasn’t at all an issue at Pilanesberg! We saw a lot of rhinos up close. We went on sunrise game drives starting around 0545. It was dark and COLD at that time in those open-air vehicles. We had several layers on including fleece lined ponchos, wool blankets, and hot water bottles that became our best friends. I broke down and bought a beanie to keep my ears warm. You could see your breath. Remember, it was winter there and South Africa is pretty far south. In the morning we would stop mid drive for coffee, hot tea or hot chocolate. In the afternoon game drives, we would stop and have a beer, wine, water, or for me, a ginger beer (nonalcoholic). I fell in love with the African ginger beer. It was very peppery and spicy. We stayed at the Black Rhino Lodge and it was a really nice place. Both the sunsets and the sunrises were amazing. I don’t know if it was because there was a lot of dust in the air or what, but the rays of the sun were just so beautiful. I have a few signs that I feel my Joe is trying to connect with me. Sunrays coming through clouds is one of them. Another is magpies…I got to see the African version of a magpie…the magpie shrike at one of our drink stops one morning. It shrieked several times and just sat on a wall and let me come relatively close. They were nice signs that Joe was with us on this trip.

See the baby rhino with its mom??? Hope I got better photos with my good camera!

The paw print in the dirt is from a hyena. We didn’t see him, but our driver was tracking him!

These thorn bushes were everywhere!

Botswana was a lovely time! I wished we could have gone to a couple of more spots within the country. Like Zimbabwe, Botswana is considered quite safe. It is an upper-middle income country with approximately 2.5 million people. The capital is Gaborone and the country covers 581,730 sq miles, of which 70% of it is the Kalahari Desert. Other African nations joke that their national flag is mostly blue because they need water so badly. Their soil is not good enough for farming but they do have a big export of beef and diamonds. The official languages are English and Setswana. Botswana became independent in 1966 and the country is safe and stable. Prior to 1966, the country was called Bechuanaland. Botswana is one of Africa’s richest countries due to their rich diamond mines. When we went into Botswana, we had to wash our shoes on our feet at the border as well as all shoes in our bags. There is anthrax in the dirt in Zimbabwe and with Botswana having such a big beef industry, they are very careful.

We stayed in Chobe National Park, which is the 2nd largest national park in Botswana and home to over 15,000 elephants over the 4,500 sq mile park. The Chobe River runs through the park with Namibia being on the other side. We went on a river boat cruise on of the evenings to see the animals in and near the water and to watch the sunset…which was spectacular. The rest of the time we did land game drives in open air vehicles. Some of the animals and birds we were able to see was a leopard (only on good camera), impala, maribu (the ugly bird), lionesses, giraffes, elephants, baboons, kuru (the ones with spiral horns), hippo, fish eagle, cape buffalo and warthogs. (just to name a few.)