A Great White Heron was standing in the water at Sunset Dam in Kruger National Park.

Note: To all of our readers visiting our site via a smartphone, please click the “View web version” tab under the word “Home” at the bottom of the page to access the web version enabling you to access all of our archives on the right side of the page. We’ll be updating our site shortly, making these extra steps unnecessary. Thank you. 

This was our friend Tusker. He is the sweetest guy who comes to visit several times each day, particularly after 1600 hours (4:00 pm). He was so comfortable he often stayed for a short nap.

As many of us are aware, India, in general, has some of the most skilled tech people in the world, and we were thrilled to use the services of a well-known company with rave reviews. We’ll post more information on this company once we go “live” with our new site sometime in the next 45 days. 

I’d anticipated this process would be stressful, but our skilled and calm developer has made it as painless as possible for me, quickly responding to changes and inquiries.

We never tired of seeing these wondrous animals, both in Kruger and in Marloth Parks.

We’ll give you, our readers, a heads-up when we know it will go live. The link will be the same, and thus, there will be nothing for you to do but to continue reading and commenting as you have over the past eight-plus years.

On another note, we’ve been grateful for the excellent WiFi connection we’ve had during the past 126 days in this hotel. But, as more and more businesses re-open in India, although cases of COVID-19 continue to rise rapidly, we’ve noticed a slowing of the connection from time to time.

Zebras were crossing the road in Kruger.

Don’t get me wrong. We appreciate being in this beautiful hotel with great food and service, especially with the conscientious efforts to protect all of us from the virus, requiring their staff to live on the premises, unable to leave for months at a time until they are given a two-week break.

(When a staff member returns from their time off, we are only served by those that have been in residence for at least two full weeks, continuing to ensure our safety).

A bloat of hippos at Sunset Dam in Kruger.

Our worst nightmares here would be (beyond exposure to COVID-19 or other health issues) that WiFi service would go down in Mumbai or the hotel. At that point, we’d lose our ability to continue to post, and equally important is our ability to stream shows from the internet to our HDMI cable to the flat-screen TV.

Last night, we had a taste of what that would be like when, for some odd reason, we were unable to stream on Netflix for the first time since we arrived on March 24, 2020.

OK, folks, here’s a new one for you…This is a “bask” of crocodiles!

We were watching season four of the beautiful historical series Reign when the signal dropped repeatedly. I started and re-started my laptop to no avail. For two hours, we continued to attempt to get the show to resume. 

Finally, the later it got, the signal improved. We have to consider the reality that as more time passes, the hotel has more and more guests, mostly business travelers, since this hotel is primarily geared toward business travelers.

As winter continues, there’s less and less green vegetation for the wildlife in Kruger and Marloth Park.

Some domestic flights have resumed in India, although as we’ve mentioned, international travel remains at a standstill. The added domestic travelers have certainly impacted the quality of the WiFi in the evening hours when most will be online. 

Hopefully, we won’t experience this issue in the future.

Stay safe and healthy!

Photo from one year ago today, July 27, 2019:

A six-year-old photo was posted last year when our photo inventory for Ireland was lacking. Busy preparations surrounded the church in Campanario as workers rushed to get the decorations in place for Saturday’s religious festivities. For the post one year ago, please click here.