Africa

Dan went to Africa for work. Really, if you have any time at all to look through pictures, you should look through them here. But here is the short, blindly annotated version.

He was in South Africa. If you were taught geography in the American public school system, like me, then you might need a reminder that South Africa is at the bottom of Africa - pretty much as far away from Seattle as possible on Earth. Two really, really, really long plane rides away.

The real purpose of his trip was for work. Dan works on HIV modeling, and they get their data from the Africa Center which is located about 40 minutes from Richard's Bay, about 2 hours north east of Durban. He gave a talk there as well as toured around seeing what they do - if you are really interested then you should ask Dan. He was there for a few days. The second half of his trip was in Cape Town for an HIV conference.

The Africa Center...

...where these people...

...turn people into data. Lots of data.

Dan did get some free time in the Richard's Bay area before having to fly to Cape Town. Now, I'm not sure what you expected Africa to look like, but I sure didn't expect this. Hello Santa Barbara?

Wait a minute, that's not Santa Barbara... this is more like the Africa I expected:

Here is the safari-mobile.

Lots more animal pictures in that link I put up at the top of the post. The second half of his trip was in Cape Town. Dan gave a talk at the HIV modeling conference, but after the conference they had a day to look around.

Look, this is where the rugby world cup was a few weeks ago!

Here are the work buddies he was with.

And here are some... wait... penguins? Really? I don't know about you but I had never imagined penguins and giraffes sharing habitat. Clearly I have a lot to learn about Africa.

Obviously Dan had a fabulous trip. The work part went great and the play part exceeded expectations. I hope he gets to go back again when the kids are older - I would love to go with him! What an amazing place and a wonderful opportunity.