No words can describe how enjoyable it is to experience these more comfortable days in South Africa. The sun is shining, and the high today will be 93F, 34C, but the humidity is low at 25%, although the dew point is high at 78. With the lower humidity, there seem to be fewer mosquitos buzzing around my head as I sit outside preparing today’s post. What a relief after all these months.
That’s not to say we won’t have many more hot and humid days in the near future, but for now, it’s ideal. This morning, we had our usual breakfast of bacon and eggs. The bacon here is excellent and turns out perfectly made in the microwave. This morning I made extra bacon for tonight’s dinner of bun-less burgers on the braai topped with purple onion, tomato, lettuce, and homemade keto ketchup, along with a side salad and rice for Tom.
We decided to make the same meal tomorrow since we’ll return to Jabula on Friday and Saturday evenings and didn’t need leftovers from Thursday.
On Friday, we go to Doc Theo, where both of us will have cardiac stress tests. I am a little nervous about having this test since I haven’t had any heart-related tests since surgery four years ago. I don’t have any heart symptoms, but I can’t help being apprehensive about having this test which Theo says is more accurate than most scans. So, we’ll see how it goes for both of us and report back on Saturday.
Tom had numerous blood tests and an aortic aneurysm screening test yesterday in Nelspruit. We’ll know the results of all the tests by the time we leave his office on Friday.
Yesterday and this morning, we had dozens of wildlife visitors, including the fun main photo of four different species of antelopes in the garden simultaneously. It was exciting to see them all together. Speaking of antelopes, Norman, often accompanied by his family, has been here no less than six times a day over the past several days. It’s always such a joy to see him and, of course, Nina and Natalie.
We realize we are taking a significant risk by not booking where we’ll be staying in a little over 60 days when we leave Marloth Park for a year. But we have so much to deal with before we go. Once we get my visa extension, we can apply online for our US passports. If anything goes wrong with applying in Pretoria, we may have to fly to the US to do the renewals.
Tom got his visa renewed for a new 90-day period when he left for the US for his brother Jerome’s funeral weeks ago. We can’t apply for the US passports until we get my visa extension; otherwise, it appears I am here illegally, and we’d have trouble getting the passports renewed in South Africa if I appear to be an illegal alien. Thus, we’re leaving everything up in the air until we have the visa extension.
In the worst-case scenario, if we can get the extension and the passports, we can easily plan a trip to a preferred location while we wait for the next cruise out of Edinburgh in August. We are confident it will all work out. We no longer feel we need to plan far in advance as we had in the past, especially since we don’t want to risk losing deposits or prepaid venues.
That’s it for today, folks. We hope you have a fantastic Wednesday! We’re planning on it!
Be well.
Photo from one year ago today, March 29, 2022:
