Day 13: Monte Casino Bird Gardens

Today was packed with fun!  This morning, we went to Monte Casino which is as it sounds, a casino. It's like Las Vegas invaded Johannesburg!  The picture below is the entrance.  You can see the giant Hyundai hot air balloon in the background.  The boys were planning on taking a ride in it, but it was too windy.  So, we'll go back another day.

Entrance to Monte Casino (one of them at least - it's huge)

This is a picture inside the hotel.  For those of you who know me well, my memory is not the best.  This hotel is strikingly similar to one of the Vegas hotels, but I cannot remember which one it is.  Anyone want to help me out here?

Inside Monte Casino

After wandering around a bit, we headed out to the Bird Gardens.  We chose a weekday to avoid the crowds, which I am thankful for, but a weekday means school groups, which I was not thankful for.  After they took over one of the aviaries, we did our best to steer clear of them.  Much better :)  It's hard to do justice to this place without you being able to see it first hand.  Blue, red, and green macaws - perched on tree branches, completely free to roam.  One of them stood on the path right next to us.  "N" was quick to point out the cockatoo from Rio and I reminded him that the lemurs were from Madagascar.  They also had small displays of snakes, frogs, and some seriously disgusting tarantulas.  One of them was called a Pink Beauty.  Let me tell you, there was nothing beautiful about it!!!  There we also lizards, turtles, plenty of ducks, geese, and swans, flamingos, meerkats (seriously adorable - can I have one???), and tons more!

About an hour after we arrived, there was a bird show in the amphitheater   While a bit cheesy, it was fun and a great chance to see how smart birds are.  Here are some pictures of the show:

Here we go again with my bad memory....I can't remember what this one was called.  It's a crane, but which one I am not sure.  But....cool huh? :)

This is Dennis the Blue Crane.  Blue Cranes are the national bird of South Africa and were once endangered, but are not any longer.  Yay!

They call him the Rockstar - Oliver the Pelican.  It was pretty neat to see him fly and skim across the pond.  He's huge!!  

This is Tango the Toucan.  Kevin managed to snap this awesome picture of him in flight.

Below are a few more pictures we took as we walked:

I have no idea what this bird is, but it's beautiful!

Red Macaw stretching its wings.

This area was completely open.  So nice to see these beautiful birds given the opportunity to have some freedom!

This is one of the many crane species at the Gardens.  Check out his crown.  If only we could all have guaranteed good hair days!! :)

We had lunch inside the hotel at Wimpy, which is a fast food-ish restaurant that I think would be most like Johnny Rockets.  It's a burger and fry joint, but you have a server.  With "N's" new-found love for grilled cheese, it was no surprise that he had another one for lunch. :)  One thing that we found interesting about Monte Casino was that the casino part of it was actually quite small and completely quiet. There were only a handful of people in it and there were no bells, dings, or jingles.  

After lunch we headed out to one of the malls to try to find SA rubgy hats and to get groceries.  The boys got coordinating green and yellow SA rugby hats and I, in my quirkiness, chose a Sharks rubgy hat.  I took a picture of it, but we didn't bring the right cable to upload it.  I'll tale another one tomorrow.  Let's just say that it's awesome and you are totally going to want one!

Once back at the guesthouse, it was off to the pool we went!  After playing catch in the shallow end for a bit, we grabbed "N's" floaties and Kevin worked on coaxing him into the deep end again.  While he realizes that the floaties prevent him from going under, he still didn't trust them completely.  After many trips back and forth across the pool with Dad, he finally worked up the courage to swim all the way across the pool with his floaties on by himself!  And as if that's not cool enough, he took them off and did it without them!  Yes, I took video.  Again, I did it with the camera that we don't have the right cable for, so I won't be able to post it until we get home, but the video is priceless.  He is a ham for the camera, so there's a dance beforehand as well. :)  He was so proud, as were we!  We are going to go visit Lee and "T" tomorrow at their guesthouse, so we'll see how he feels in a different pool!

Dinner, schoolwork, ice cream, and How To Train Your Dragon topped off our evening.  After all that activity, it took some work to get him up to brush his teeth for bed.  Only a few more days until court!  We will be meeting with our social workers here in SA on Wednesday to go over what we will need to do with our paperwork after court.  Then, after court on Thursday, we have been invited to Thanksgiving at Auntie Beth's house (she is the director of Oasis Haven and is from California).  We are so excited to be able to share the holiday with our new friends and people that have made such an amazing impact in "N's" life.  From the Bethany team in the States, to the Wandisa and Oasis Haven teams here in SA, God has blessed us with great friends to help us through this process.  Yes, there were some bumps along the way, but each one was a labor of love to get us to this point.  There is no doubt in our minds that it has all come through in His perfect timing.  What better day could we choose than Thanksgiving Day to have as our Gotcha Day?  We have so much to be thankful for!!!

Laura and Kevin