Vaccinations

Yesterday Milja and I took the puppies back to DARG for their vaccinations. They were also all dewormed just in case. They behaved very well and only started crying when they needed the loo, which they did on the lawn back at home - they waited for about 30 minutes before relieving themselves - very disciplined.

While we were at DARG they mentioned that they had taken in a lot of puppies in the last few days and that we could take more if we wanted to. Today we went and collected three more puppies, these ones the same age as the others when we got them, but so much smaller. They are all white and one has black splodges, two females, one male. They are the cutest dogs and far smaller than the other 5 who have grown tremendously in the last 2 weeks. We still have the original puppies, but we won't be able to have them for too much longer - they are starting to eat solid food a lot more and so are eligible to be adopted by families.

Puppy photos

Step out Hosted on Zooomr

Puppy love Hosted on Zooomr

One Tree Hill Hosted on Zooomr

Another one Hosted on Zooomr

Playful Hosted on Zooomr

Glory days Hosted on Zooomr

Rover Hosted on Zooomr

More photos here.

May the force

Well, it's not quite May yet. But we have definitely had some April showers.

May the force Hosted on Zooomr

Taken during a huge downpour in the middle of last week.

We even had a thunderstorm on Monday night, which was a first for us here in Cape Town. Today, though, the sun is shining and I just went for a run with Megan.

Puppies going strong

We have had the puppies now for 9 days, and they have definitely grown up. I am just going through some photos I took last week and they are much bigger nowadays. They don't get up as much in the night, and are eating food as well as drinking milk. I think they will leave us at the weekend, which will be sad, as we have got used to having them here. Hopefully we will get another 'batch' soon :) (We have a 5kg pot of milk powder arriving today, so I think we HAVE to have more someday soon!)

Namibia Road Trip: Day Seven

Monday 9th April - 552km

We had a late start today, leaving the motel mid-morning. We wrote postcards, packed and played with the Motel's dog.



Today was filled, again, with a lot of driving. We drove for about 6 hours down through South Africa to Cape Town, and home. We were all exhausted, but we had had an amazing week, definitely recommended. A thick band of cloud awaited us as we approached the city reminding us that we were once back in more usual Autumn temperatures.

Namibia Road Trip: Day Six

Sunday 8th April - 1044.6km

Today we had the earliest wake-up of all, leave before 4am. We had a whole lot of driving to do, and we were planning on reching the Namibi-South Africa border before we slept, and we were at the most Northerly place we had stayed. We drove back down the same road we had on Friday, this time South towards Aus. We were heading past Aus (literally past Klein Aus Vista) and Westwards towards the coastal town of Lüderitz.

About 10km before you reach Lüderitz, there is a tiny town called Kolmanskop. It was formed in the very early 1900s when a single diamond was discovered on the rail tracks, and since grew quickly into a small mining town. The town was deserted in the mid 1950s when the last families moved out. The miners had all moved further South as there were bigger diamonds and better opportunities there. Kolmanskop is now a ghost town.

I had been looking forward to visiting Kolmanskop the most out of anything we'd done on the trip. Ghost towns are really interesting - being able to walk around the place (nearly) as it was 50 years ago when everyone left. The place was great. There was a large town hall with a small bowling (or 'skittle') alley, a few dozen houses, the mine, an ice factory and a bakery. We walked around the hall and up to the bigger, two story houses which were on a rise behind the town. This is where the mine manger, the book keeper, and the more important residents lived. The houses were broken, full of sand and probably quite dangerous to be in! The 'Minenverwalter's (mine manager's) house had, we think, been recently renovated, as it was a lot less run down and had nice painted walls.



(See more in the set 'Kolmanskop Ghost Town')

We walked around for maybe an hour or so, and then got in the car and headed West to Lüderitz. It is a small, coastal town with a harbour and a population of near 13,000. We scouted round for a while trying to find somewhere to have lunch, but as it was Easter Sunday, we didn't have any luck. We got lunch from a supermarket instead.



On the drive back East towards Aus and beyond, we stopped and looked at wild horses. Their ancestors were once brought to the area by Germans when they rules the country, who had then escaped to the wild. The place we stopped at is the only source of water in the area for them, so we were guaranteed to see them. There were also oryx and ostriches there drinking.



Then started the long drive to the border. We drove for hours, this time taking a different route back. We drove along some dirt roads, through some towns, and then finally reached the Orange River, which runs along the border between the two countries before reaching the sea. We followed it East for what seemed like forever, and by dusk we reached the border crossing.

The officer there was called Heikki, can you believe. Finnish missionaries first came to Namibia in the 1870s, and the names, and even in some parts, the language, have been carried on to this day. He had given his daughters Finnish names.



We drove for another hours or so, back to the same motel we stayed at on the first night, but this time with freshly baked take-away pizza from town (Springbok). We slept well.

Namibia Road Trip: Day Five

Today we had a mega early start. We were heading to the dunes at Sesriem so we were left at 5am in order to have visited the place before the sun had risen high enough to make the temperature unbearable. We were told at dinner the previous night that the gate opened at 6am, so to avoid the queues that gather, we left a whole hour before. I banged my knee badly on a step in the dark on the way out, which jarred the joint. Not so fun to sit huddled in the back of a Landrover on a bumpy gravel track!

The early rise worked out well, as we were the first car to reach the gate. Soon a queue of about 9 cars and a bus we behind us. While we waited for the gate to open at sunrise, we ate our breakfast - a box of goodies that the lodge made for us. At 6am, we were finally let in after about a half-hour wait, and we passed through the office to get a pass, then through a second gate, and then we were in. We drove for something like 20-30 minutes through the large expanse between dunes either side of us, and eventually reached Dune 45.



This is the most visited dune in Namibia, and it is possible to walk up it. Of course, we did. I was struggling with my now stiff right knee, but we all made it to the top, including India, who was carried by Milja and Heikki some of the way. Walking uphill is hard enough, but on sand, it is a lot more challenging. The views from the top were amazing. If you look on a satellite image of the area we were in, you can see that the sand seems to be brushed aside leaving a massive gap in the middle. Matias and I made it to the top first, and we sat and watched the sun rise higher over the dunes in the distance. Once everyone had arrived and had taken in the surroundings, we decided to head down the dunes, but not along the path. We headed down. We all scaled the steep side of the dune (which was difficult for me without being able to bend my leg properly), and had a lot of fun in the process. We were down the bottom by 7:30am.



Once de-sanded and back in the car, we continued driving West towards Sossusvlei, the area right at the end of the 'gap'. From there to the West coast, there is nothing but sand. We stopped, Heikki walked for a bit, Milja and I crammed in some reading, and then Matias and India had their turns at driving :)



On our way back to the lodge, we had a quick trip to another canyon, the Sesriem Canyon, this one a lot smaller than the Fish River Canyon we saw a few days previous. We saw some baboons running past on the other side, and had a quick peek down into the gorge.



Back at the lodge, we relaxed for the afternoon. We had some lunch, played cards and swam. At 3:45pm it was time for horse riding. I was looking forward to it this time, after riding properly for the first time two days ago. We had an amazing time on the Sunset Ride, speeding around on the very open, and massive, plains (which was actually quite scary!). At sunset we reached a spot where there was a table set up with drinks and finger food. By the time we were back on our horses to head home, it was dark, and we couldn't see much further than a few metres ahead all the way back. Apart from upwards. We could see the stars so clearly, and it was so beautiful. India fell aslep on her horse and was quickly transfered to Milja's horse with her to stop her from sliding off silently without us knowing. And as per usual, we were treated to another thunderstorm over the mountains ahead. We got back, had dinner and fell asleep early, as we had an even earlier start ahead on Sunday - we were heading home.

Namibia Road Trip: Day Four

Friday 6th April - 336km

There was still no lie-in today either :) We had a hearty breakfast at the yummy buffet and then started packing the car for the journey. Another visitor came up to Heikki and pointed out that the rear left tyre had a puncture. Not too helpful on a road trip. A worker came and helped put the spare tyre on and we drove into Aus to the garage there to get the puntured tyre mended. Aus is a very small town - it looks like about 10 houses from the road. It's much more like a village than a town. Anyway after about 30 minutes the tyre was fixed and put back on and after buying a few drinks from the hotel down the road, we left Northwards.



We had quite a long drive, through long plains and we saw wildlife like springbok, zebras and ostriches. As we got more North we could start to see the red sand of the dunes that we were headed to. There is a long desert than runs along the West coast of the country, the Namib Desert and what we could see was the start of it. We eventually reached our next place of stay, the Desert Homestead and Horse Trails in the early afternoon.



It is another amazing place to stay, right in the middle of nowhere - no towns nearby, no other settlements, just a few other lodges a few kilometres away. We got our rooms, had some lunch and then relaxed, playing cards and swimming in the pool. By 5pm, when it was starting to get darker as the sun started to set behind a mountain, I decided to go running. Heikki also wanted to go walking and we both ventured up a path behind the lodge, along with Matias. The path, unbeknown to me, quickly turned up a hill (which completely knackered me out) and ended up at the top giving amazing views over the plain and the lodge below. I only had my small DV camera with me but Heikki, I'm sure, has some great photos from our high vantage point. There were storm clouds brewing over the mountains over the other side of the plain and a massive rainbow formed in front of them. It is the first ever full rainbow I've seen that I was able to pinpoint the start and the beginning of. A fantastic sight to see from such a high position.



The sunset grew into an overwhelming red glow. I managed to take a few photos after I had returned from the hill with the better camera. After dark, the whole family had a quick swim together and then got dressed ready for dinner. A lovely 3-course meal of pork followed and then it was back to our huts where Milja and I tried some more sociology reading.

Side note: We were planning on only staying at the Desert Homestead for one night (Friday), but we couldn't go riding on the horses as we had hoped on the Friday, so we booked them for the Saturday and the rooms for the extra night.

Puppies

We had a call on Saturday morning from DARG sasking if we could foster five 5-week old puppies after we had left our details with them, saying that we are willing to do so.

Minna, Matias, Milja and India went to pick the little guys up and brought them back. Apparently they had been abandoned by their mum. They had flees and weren't too energetic. We had fun with them outside for a while, but they seemed to want to be inside together sleeping. They were treated for flees at DARG before we got them, so the flees were starting to drop off everywhere.

Looking after puppies is not hard. It is very tiring. The routine we are currently in with them is...

• Sleep for 2-3 hours
• Get up, wee, poo
• Play
• Eat
• Wee, poo
• Sleep fpr 2-3 hours
• etc ...

With five of them running around it can get quite hectic.

We have named all the puppies, although, of course, the names probably won't stick forever as new owners will most likely want their own names. We have 3 girls and 2 boys, and in that mix we have a set of identical twins. We have Rover and Timmy (twin), and Bellle, Mozy (twin) and Tiger.

Minna has been attending to them pretty much constantly since we got them, feeding them when they are up and helping them get to the paper in time when they need to 'go'. I offered to sleep with them in the lounge and be awake with them in the night, and have done so for the last two nights. The lack of sleep caught up with me and I just woke up at 1pm after going back to sleep once people had gone to school and work. Minna has been up all this time with the puppies. Andrew, a family friend who is staying with us at the moment, has also been helping out - I wouldn't have survived yesterday on my own at home without him.

The puppies are a lot lot livelier than they were when they arrived 4 days ago. They are bigger, too. They wolf down food like there's no tomorrow, and we had to send Heikki rushing to get more milk powder for them yesterday after they finished their first box before we realised.

India loves playing with them, and Milja is attached, of course. I think we have the puppies for another week or so before we hand them back to DARG from where they will be adopted.

I have photos, but will wait until I have finally finished putting up the Namibia set before I publish them.

Fun with the car

Today has been a bit crazy car-wise. This morning as I was just about to drive Milja to school, the car refused to start. It didn't even try - not even one of those nearly-shudder type noises. Just silence. Luckily Heikki was just leaving to work at the same time so he took her instead.

Minna phoned road side assistance and a guy came with a jump start kit and we managed to get the car running after three tries. I took it for a drive to Hout Bay with India to try and charge the battery, and Minna and I decided that I should take the car to a garage to see what the problem is. I took it to the Caltex in Hout Bay, and the guys there were sure they had to fill the battery up some more. They looked like they knew what they were doing - I certainly didn't have a clue - but it might have turned out that they ruined the battery.

I continued driving and went to the shop to get the food shopping. When I returned to the car with India and tried to start it, nothing. The same silent treatment. So I was stranded at Spar with India and four bags of shopping for about 40 minutes while we waited for the same guy to come and jump start the car again. He came and it just didn't work at all. Minna and Andrew showed up to pick up the shopping and they tried, but still nothing.

The guy suggested that I go back to the garage to ask what they had put in the battery. We drove there in his pick-up "bakkie" and asked the petrol attendant what he had put in and he swore that it was "battery water" but neither of us returned convinced.

Eventually Minna phoned a garage and one of the mechanics came and put in another battery and the car started immediately. We are getting a replacement battery on Monday and are loaning one over the weekend.

My guess is that the attendant at the garage didn't have a clue what he was doing and used something other to fill up the battery, which caused it to malfunction. In which case, it was down to me that the battery broke. Another option is that the battery is dead and just needed replacing. My third theory is that if I'd driven a bit longer then the battery might have recharged longer and been OK. We never will find out, I guess, but with a new battery coming on Monday, the car should perform fine for a while.

Getting somewhere

That is my friend Ian's (trombone) band, Kid iD. They are getting quite big. Along with having this video, they have just released their first album, have been played on BBC Radio 2 by Mark Lamarr, had one of their songs used on a television advert, and have gigs coming out of their ears. Good luck guys, see on on MTV soon no doubt :)

Namibia Road Trip: Day Three

Thursday 5th April - 445.6km

We were up early again. We had a few things planned for the day - visiting the Mesosaurus fossil park, the Giant's Playground and a Quiver tree forest. So we had a lovely buffet breakfast, which filled me up a treat, and got on our way.



First stop was a town called Keetmanshoop, where Minna and Heikki bought food for lunch and I developed some more photos for Milja's scrapbook. We then continued driving East towards our three destinations, and decided to go to the furthest one first, the fossil park, and work our way back through the others afterwards. What a good choice that was - the farm the fossils were on also had loads of quiver trees and the dolerite rock formations that formed the Giant's playground! Three birds with one stone (needless to say, we didn't bother with the others on the way back).

The fossil park, officially Mesosaurus Fossil Site & Quiver Tree Dolerite Park, has fossils in their found state and location (ie: "on-site"), which is a great way to view them. We were taken to a few different spots by the farm owner, to see the fossils still in the rock where they were discovered - there is a law meaning that he can't excavate them. The fossils are about 280 million years old, and one even had some bone from the animal. We also saw the grave of a German who died fighting the Namas in 1904 when the country was under German rule and known as "German South-West Africa".



After viewing the fossils, we taken along the track for another 2km to the farm's quiver trees. Milja and Matias rode on the back of the Landrover. The trees were everywhere and Heikki and I had a great time browsing around taking photos. The piles of dolerite looked fascinating just piled on top of eachother. The farm owner gave us a treat, too, by playing a tune with the rocks. Video below.



After driving back to the farmhouse on the back of the Landrover and having a chat with the owner, we left West again, back through Keetmanshoop and out the other side to a small town called Aus. It once had a prisoner of War camp during German reign of the country, and has a population of just 200 people. We were headed to Klein Aus Vista, a hotel a few kilometres out of town. The rooms are split into twos, grouped together like semidetached houses, and each room is like a mini house too. We rested, Milja and I did some reading for Milja's university sociology entrance exam, and after dark, went for dinner at the restaurant before falling asleep.

Namibia Road Trip: Day Two

Wednesday 4th April - 410km

We awoke quite early on Wednesday in order to get through the Namibian border and on to our next place of stay. But first, we headed into town (Springbok) to get some breakfast and to fill up the tank. I also developed some photos for a scrapbook Milja made of our trip.



We got to the border at about 10:30am South African time, which is 9:30am Namibian time. We hid our electronic equipment as we were told before hand that we might have to pay the equivalent price of each item when we entered the country, although we would get it back as we left. The process was quite easy, first going through the different stages on the South African side, then driving a few hundred metres through a bit of a no-man's land to the Namibian offices, from where we were given clearance to proceed into the country. It was a lot hotter here than in Cape Town, the last place we had been outside during day time.



After a few hours of driving through Namibia and on the rocky, gravel roads, we reached the Cañon Roadhouse, an ex-farmhouse-turned-lodge in the middle of nowhere. We were about 20km from the Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon in America.

The lodge is a very cool place, quite new and modern, and decoraterd with old signs and memorabilia.



We were quite hungry so we had lunch. It was very hot - mid 30s ° C. Luckily the lodge had a swimming pool! Minna had a rest in their room while the rest of us went out to cool down. Matias and I ended up doing 60+ lengths each after I challenged him, while Milja sunbathed.

We had booked a trip to another nearby place, the Cañon Lodge, to go horse riding. I had never been horse riding before, but Milja has been itching to go for a while, and India loves horses. The riding was fun; we followed the guide for about an hour in the lowering sun and returned tired but not as sore as I thought I would be!

[Waiting for photos from Heikki :)]

As the sun was setting, we were in a hurry - Heikki wanted to go and visit the canyon at sunset. The canyon was about 20km away from the Lodge, and unfortunately we didn't quite make it in time to see the sun set. As we arrived, there was just the vibrant red-yellow glow hanging above the horizon.

The canyon is massive. It was hard to comprehend just how big it was, as there wasn't anything to compare its size to, but it was definitely on the large side. We could see lightning coming down towards the North, over the canyon, in the midst of the pink clouds. Milja tried her hardest to capture the lightning on film, but it was infrequent enough to make that a tough challenge.

We headed back to the lodge and had an awesome meal. Milja ordered Oryx which we had never eaten before, and it was delicious - very tender - and definitely better tasting than my very regular-sounding rump steak :)

It was now dark and another thunderstorm was breaking out behind/over the mountain just a bit away from the lodge. We were again treated to an awesome display of sheet and fork lightning, and later on it came closer, although not over head, and we had a few spots of rain. Heikki managed to get a shot of some lightning...

[Waiting for photo from Heikki :)]

Namibia Road Trip: Day One

Tuesday 3rd April - 586.9km

Our holiday started by leaving home in Hout Bay and driving to pick up Heikki from the University. We left from home at just after 2pm and so were fully on our way at about 3pm, driving North along N7 towards Namibia.

The drive wasn't too hard, just quite long for the first day. We slept, watched DVDs and read a bit to pass the time. Family friend, Tepo, had lent us his family's portable DVD player which turned out to be a valuable addition throughout the week.

We were treated to a beautiful, lingering sunset that seemed to last forever, and was followed by an amazing, and at some times, quite violent, thunderstorm above the mountains to the East. It was spitting out lightning at a rate of about 15 times per minute. Set to a background of Coldplay playing on the iPod, it was a beautiful end to the day.

We drove for about 6 hours in total and finally reached a small motel and caravan park just outside the town of Springbok, just over 100km South of the Namibian border. It was nothing special - a motel is a motel after all - but it did us well and we had a good night's sleep.

Photo: I was happy once

I was happy once Hosted on Zooomr

Back in SA

Hello :)

We arrived back in Cape Town yesterday evening from our week in Namibia. We had an amazing time, drove over 3,500 km and did so many things that it's going to be hard to write concise blog posts about our trip. I also have a ton of photos to get through and put online. Nevertheless, I will start writing up the week today and hopefully have something for you to read and see later on.

On hols

We, as in the whole family, are off to Namibia tomorrow for a 6-day road-trip/holiday! Should be great fun.

Goodbye until Monday. We will return with stories and photos galore.

End of the road

Sadly, this weekend was not such a good one for my sport teams, especially in Finland.

Espoo Blues (ice hockey) lost their third game in their Playoff Semi-final series against Kärpät. The series was over in the minimum 3 games (with scores 1-4, 2-3 and 2-3 (after pens)), and now Kärpät (first place in the league) will play Jokerit (second place in the league) in the Finals, so (maybe) it all worked out how it should have. The Blues play HPK in the Bronze game on Thursday

FC Honka (football) also lost in semi-finals. They were playing in the Liigacup, a warm-up competition for the league starting in a few weeks, against FC Inter. They lost 2-1.

And for QPR, a defeat this weekend was inevitable, playing promotion hopefuls West Brom.

Half way there

Milja and Matias are now in their mid-term holiday. On Friday the school gave out the Third Quarter/Mid Semester report. Milja has been working extra hard this past semester, and her grades, thankfully, reflected her extra effort. She got straight As in her seven subjects, with a GPA of 3.96, which improved from 3.86 from last term. Hopefully, despite the extra work load from reading for her entrance exam in June, she can carry on with her high grades and finish the year ready for University.

I am also half-way through my studies and looking forward to going back and focusing on photography for the next two and a bit months before returning to Finland.