hakuna matata - honeymoon part 1

Khaki from head to toe we entered the South African bush! It was a long journey from the beaches of Florida to the red dirt earth of Africa, but I am so glad we decided to look at our honeymoon as an opportunity to do something we wouldn't do otherwise. We spent four nights at the Ulusaba Game Reserve in the Sabi Sands preserve in North Eastern South Africa, and we loved every single minute of it. I would say 98% of those minutes were spent sitting enjoying ourselves, whether on a game drive, at one of the six meals during the day or watching the hippos. Heavenly.

The photo above is of our tracker, Anios, who has been working in the park for over thirty years. During one game drive he got up out of his seat, with only a radio in hand, and disappeared into the bush in search of lions. Who actually looks for lions, alone, without a gun?
This is one of my favorite photos. The layering is wonderful, from dead tree, to cheetah, to tall grasses, to the denser bush in the background, it really capture the Sabi Sands landscape.
Where are the dinosaurs? When we spotted our first rhino we took a minute to look around the area for any signs of a stegosaurus. No really I almost did. The girth and armor like skin of the rhino recalls the time of the dinosaurs. Rhinos are really just cows in a different body, eating grass all day, everyday. I adore the bird tea party that is happening on this rhino's back.
The look on Zach's face when we were on the game drives was my favorite part of our entire honeymoon. Excited. Curious. Happy. I had to remind myself that we were out to see the animals and that I could stare at my new husband later. This picture really captures Zach during those five days on safari. Here are a couple shots in and around our lodge. Ulusaba was unbelievable. Considering this was our first safari trip we don't have anything to compare it to, but we would highly recommend it! The lodge is composed of a series of low tree houses strung together with wooden walkways and rope bridges. Our room was its own little tree house, complete with mosquito netting around the bed, a claw-footed tub and a porch with a view onto the river and bush beyond. Monkeys and Nala were frequent visitors to the trees and grass around the lodge.
One of our favorite afternoon activities was to walk out along the raised tree-walk to the hippo pond. The top photo shows how long the walk is and the bottom photos give a little bit of context. Considering it is not advised to go for a walk in the African bush, having this elevated walkway above the bush allowed us to view the animals from above and also go for a little excursion after lunch.
Cubs! The Lioness and her two male cubs were enjoying the afternoon sun in the grass when we spotted them. This elephant got so close to our Land Rover that I had a hard time taking a photo of him. Speaking of photos and cameras...I got a new camera as a wedding gift from my parents! A Canon DSLR complete with three different lenses. Not to worry I am still attached at the hip with my little Canon S90, but without the zoom lens of my new camera a lot of the photos in this post wouldn't exist!
Zach spotted a kudu right from the porch outside our room. In addition to the kudu we spotted a couple warthogs, copious amounts of impala and some nala.
One of the highlights of the trip was catching a pack of wild dogs in the middle of dinner. They had just killed an impala and while some ate it others watched for unwanted guests. These pictures didn't come out that well, but this was Zach's favorite part of the safari so I thought it best to include them.
spots and stripes - such funny wilderness outfits!
Me in all my khaki-coated glory! With my new camera in hand.

Zach's favorite sighting was the wild dog kill, which we were able to capture on camera, but my favorite moment was a bit tougher. Imagine sipping champagne in the middle of an open grassy field where the only light is coming from the headlights of the Land Rover and you hear a deep grunt. Yikes! A family of Rhinos had come to join us for cocktails!

Stay tuned for honeymoon part 2 and 3 coming in the days ahead.

honeymoon sneak peak

This is a little sneak peak for those of you out there who have been checking a few times a day for the last couple weeks in the hopes of an update and are desperate for some news, any news...namely Pete and Crem!

Wow is all I really have to say about the wedding and honeymoon. It's a bit daunting to sit here and try and sum up my emotions in a blog post, so I probably won't today, and maybe not even tomorrow, and maybe it won't all come out in one post at all, but will instead be scattered throughout the upcoming wedding-honeymoon posts and you can sit and pull and piece everything together yourselves over a cup of coffee and a piece of toast.

In truth the pictures say more than I could ever really hope to type in a post. I didn't really know what to expect from the photographs, but friends have been sending us their photos (if you haven't sent us photos and you took some, send them!!) and our amazing-wonderful-uber fabulous photographer Amanda just started sending us photos yesterday and I think the words smile and love sum it up. Zach and I are beaming in each and every photo and looking at the photos makes me smile all over again.

I just finished downloading the honeymoon photos and I am beginning to sort through them, but the one above of the leopard yawning in the tree is an early favorite. I can't promise a full honeymoon post today, but I'm hopeful that I will get one up soon so stay tuned. In the meantime visit www.orchardcovephotography.blogspot.com for some rehearsal dinner photos and later today some wedding photos!!!!

we're MARRIED!

photo by Amanda Herzberger of Orchard Cove Photography

This is Talley Mayer (!!!!!!!) writing from the Orlando International airport. We are off to South Africa for our honeymoon. There really aren't words to describe how wonderful this weekend was. To our friends and family reading this - we LOVE you and loved spending our wedding weekend with you. Off we go...!!

a whole lotta lovin

I cannot believe it has been almost two weeks since I last posted from the Lufthansa terminal in Frankfurt. Time flies, so much so that our sixteen month engagement is about to come to an end - we are getting married THIS weekend! I arrived in Florida on Saturday and Zach flies in from Zurich on Wednesday night. It is so nice to finally be in the place where the wedding will take place, a calmness settled over me the moment we arrived. We are so excited, our guests are excited and it looks like it is going to be a beautiful weekend!

This post was something I had planned to post right before I left Zurich, but I never quite got around to it with all the packing and organizing and chocolate buying that I was doing. Anyway, Zach's favorite food, next to bacon, is anything that has coconut in it. Coconut cream pie, mounds bars, coconut sorbet and of course coconut cake are all among his favorites. Not to ruin it for any weddings guests reading this, but one of the tiers of the wedding cake is coconut so I thought I would make us a coconut cake to celebrate our last night in Zurich together before I flew to the states. I like coconut, I don't love it, but I do love chocolate so I decided to add some chocolate into the cake. I mean why not?
I was surprised to find coconut in the local Coop, just sitting there amongst the potatoes and apples. It only cost about 2 swiss francs, which I thought was reasonable, until I remembered that I had to figure out a way to crack it and get to the flesh. I ended up using a screw driver to make a hole in the bottom so that I could release the fluid and then I put it in the oven at 400 for about fifteen minutes, which helped with the cracking.
The flesh was good, but not as sweet as I had initially been thinking. The recipe called for sweetened coconut, which I was not able to find in the market, so I added a tablespoon or two of sugar.

I'd love to post the recipe in this post, but it's been so long since I made it that I actually can't remember where I found the recipe. I will have to do some research and post it when we get back from the honeymoon. Although, at that point I'll be so busy posting pictures of giraffes and elephants that you probably won't care about the recipe for this coconut cake.
I initially planned on making just one cake, but then it came out of the oven and it looked so small that I decide to make a layer cake with two round cakes. The cake was incredibly moist, perhaps due to all of the canned coconut milk and butter!
The original recipe called for a buttercream icing, but I decided to substitute it for a white chocolate whipped cream frosting, which was absolutely delicious, and much lighter albeit not in calorie count.
And so I leave you with this coconut cake. I don't think I will be posting again until after we return from our honeymoon at the end of April. I hope you have enjoyed my posts over the last few months and that you will come back to read it when I start posting again. Perhaps I'll lure you back with wedding photos and honeymoon shots?
This photo was taken a long time ago, at the beginning of us, before the word marriage or husband/wife had even entered our minds. I believe this was taken in the spring of 2003, or was it 2004? I'm not quite sure, but I do remember that it was a sunny spring day in New Haven. So here I am hoping for a sunny spring day for Saturday.