to go on a safari

Pretty soon my husband and I will be celebrating our 4th anniversary. People do not lie when they say that time passes quickly.

We got married in February, in Saskatchewan, because that gave us an excuse to leave on a warm vacation every year. I was hoping for a snowy wintry day, I even bought a pure white dress so I wouldn't clash with the snow. Our wedding photos look like it could be fall or early spring. We had an oddly warm February day, and rather than my dress being a snow clumped mess, it looked like I swept the floor everywhere we went. I shouldn't  complain, the next day it was -26 with a windchill and the snow was blowing around so much that we could barely see across the street. 

Two days after we were wed we took off to Cape Town, South Africa for almost 4 weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, if you are engaged I am going to give you some advice... Spend it all on the honeymoon. Cut your guest list in half, don't give out favours (most people either don't take them or they throw them out - make a donation in lieu of a present, it's much more thoughtful), take all the money you will have saved and put it toward the honeymoon. Get as far away for as long as you can afford. It's a great way to start married life. 

We stayed in a guest house in Camps Bay for the first ten days. We rented a scooter and scooted around the city. Up and down the mountain toward the V&A waterfront, over the Kloof Nek road, and I'd have to tap him on the shoulder every so often and remind him to scoot on the other side of the street. 

We rented a car and drove west on the Garden Route to a family run Game Reserve. This was definitely the highlight of the trip. We checked into a tiny little yurt and our deck over looked the giraffe sanctuary and watering hole. In the early morning you could hear the Water Buffalo chuffing and egging each other on for a fight. The springboks would skitter across the hill in unison as you sipped your coffee on the veranda. 

And there were spiders. Rand Spiders that are the size of your face. Rand is their currency, I have yet to find out if they named their money after the Spider or the Spider after their money.

When we were settling in on our first night, I was in the washroom and had taken my contacts out. I hadn't put my glasses on yet. And a friendly Rand Spider decided to click its toes across the floor. My husband freaked out. He screamed and asked if I had seen it. Apparently it was the size of a tarantula, it wouldn't have fit in the palm of my hand. When I don't have lenses on or in I can barely make out the time on my wrist watch. I was thankfully blind to the situation. He kept screeching and grabbed my toiletry kit and hunted the spider. It had crawled up the wall so he took a swing, the spider fell to the ground, and he whacked it, and smashed it, repeatedly smiting this man-eating spider. When he finished he laid on the bed, out of breath. Like he had wrestled a bear and won. 

He took a picture of his kill to show me it's man-eating teeth but it was blurry and I still didn't have my glasses (I also didn't want to look because I wanted to be able to sleep at night). 

He called the front desk to inquire just how poisonous these giant arachnids were.

Totally harmless. Although they look like they could eat you for breakfast they are "more afraid of you than you are of them". With their big furry legs and sharp incisors. My husband wasn't convinced, he kept asking if she was sure. I could hear her thick Saffy accent saying, "You arre fighn, they won't keel you, they arre haarmlis spidahs". 

He was disappointed. Here he thought he saved both of our lives when he killed a little garden spider. He handed me my toiletry kit to finish getting ready. I pulled out my glasses case and noticed it was a bit bent on the one corner, and it was extra closed. I pried it open and heard some of the cardboard snap. Inside my glasses were mangled. The nose pieces were flattened against the glass and the arms were extra crossed closed. 

At this point we hadn't even seen a lion but we already had a brush with death.

Happy anniversary honey!

That's all.