Seven years

This blog post is a little late. One month late, to be exact. But I couldn’t forget to mark Miss B’s seventh birthday altogether (not to mention showcase my ongoingly inexpert cake-decorating skills). I couldn’t do it here on the day, because it was right in the middle of our trip and we were staying on an ostrich farm with basically no internet access. And minimal baking equipment, although I did manage to produce a cake—of sorts:

We had it for breakfast, before leaving the ostrich farm (and half the cake with the ostrich farmers) and driving down to the coast at Knysna for the main event of the day:

A visit to Knysna Elephant Park, a free-range elephant sanctuary home to the world’s southernmost elephant population and a refuge for orphaned, injured, and displaced elephants from across Africa. Because we visited in the middle of winter, we had the place more or less to ourselves, and our kind and knowledgeable guide (wonderfully and memorably named Resistance) gave us lots of information, plus plenty of time to:

feed

walk with

visit with

and even, briefly, ride on

(one smallish member of) a small herd of mother and young elephants.

It was one of the high points of our trip, and a birthday that I’m hoping Miss B will always remember.

(Did I mention that Miss B has celebrated birthdays in four different countries? Not bad for someone who hasn’t even hit double digits, eh!)

And one that will be forever commemorated by her “real” cake, shown here at her belated birthday dinner following our return home:

Happy Birthday, Miss B. May you enjoy all your adventures of being seven as much as this one.