A visit from Papa and Brit!

 When we came back from Rhode Island, Papa and Brit were on a plane just a few short days behind us. Finally - summer guests that can experience the high season in SA!! We wasted no time and set off on some animal encounters.

In between fun, it's the middle of summer so we had lots of time at the beach and in the pool!

We went to Seaview Lion Park and were amazed by how much our baby cubs had grown since September!

And then we met some new ones that were small enough for Sasha and Teddy to pet:

Then it was time to head off down the Garden Route for some adventures.

And Brit did this!

We stopped at a wonderful little organic dairy farm and met some new-born calves.

 And had the most AWESOME cheese-plate lunch imaginable! And then more calves were born while we were eating!

 We spotted our first baboon of the trip right outside of Plet. We were excited but didn't realize that we were going to drive up the baboon highway the next day. We saw soooo many!

 We stayed at Bella Manga guest house again, but this time we stayed in a converted grain silo. Girls had the upstairs and boys had the downstairs.

 And we conquered the Plett Puzzle Park!

 Then it was time to head into the bush, past Angie's and into the Bavaiaanskloof. There were quite a few obstacles on the road though...

 We spent the first 2 nights back at the Makkedaat Caves and Jeff drove out to meet us.

It was great to be there in the summer and get to experience the farm dam and slide!

 And there were plenty of these guys everywhere!

 We even got to see a bunch of guys trying to wrangle an ostrich. TRYING being the operative word. Ostriches pretty much go wherever they want!

 After 2 nights in the cave we moved into the Speekhout treehouse for 1 night. I had been trying to score a night in this thing for what seemed like forever, but there's only one treehouse so you have to get it early.

We ate lunch and then hiked way up a ravine to a crazy little swimming hole. It was tiny, but very cold and deep. We had a nice refreshing swim in the middle of the dry 'Kloof.

 The treehouse was just awesome. Showering out in the middle of a tree was pretty cool.

 Early morning Tree-house snuggles!

When we got back from our road trip the kids started a new school year, so our big adventures had to wait for weekends. The girls took a ride down to the beach...

 And we had an very memorable trip to Addo with some magical elephant viewing. It was SO good that we stayed too long and when we got to the main gate it was padlocked shut!

No wonder we had the elephants all to ourselves... the park was closed!

 Such good hosts... see how well we take care of our guests?

 Then we did a game drive evening at Schotia. We asked for and got our same awesome driver that we had last time! The Lions were everywhere and on the move. We saw a female,

And then another pair about 30 minutes later. Right after this the lions got up, started walking down the road, and then took off after a young giraffe! It was awesome.... VIDEO HERE.

The giraffe got away but it was a wild chase in an open safari vehicle. After that we headed for the lapa and had some good grub.

 We had such a fun group that night!

After Schotia Papa and Brit only had a few more days before they had to fly back to one of the most EPIC winters on record. They made it their mission to soak up as much sun as they could and bank those days for when they got back home to cold and snow!