August 13 2016: Reunited with Garrett in Cape Town on my way back from the US to present a poster at the annual South African Derm Society meeting. I really enjoyed getting a glimpse of how dermatology is practiced in SA. I was so impressed with the intelligence of the residents and the high level of dermatology which is practiced. I expected SA to have similarly limited resources as Botswana but found that they are nowhere near as limited and are able to provide care much more equivalent to the US. I was also surprised at the reactions I got when telling people I practiced in Botswana. They were shocked and reacted as if I must be living in the bush with zero access to real medicine. I assumed there would be some affiliations and collaboration between physicians in the two countries since they are neighbors – but found out no there is absolutely none! I was even more shocked at how little people in SA knew about Botswana at all! It was a very eye opening experience!

The best part about the weekend was our culinary adventures at some of the best restaurants in the world! We had dinner at the Tasting Room in Franschoek and enjoyed an 11 course meal finished with an ice cream dessert molded and airbrushed to look like a real pineapple! Coolest thing we have EVER seen! The best thing about the tasting room was that the menu consisted of different meals for garrett and I – so we were able to try twice as many things! The next day we had lunch at the Test Kitchen. This was even more incredible. The kitchen is open and we were seated right next to it so we could watch the team of chefs put together our meals. Each step is so intricate and requires such precision – it was awe inspiring to watch them work so passionately! I also did the wine pairing here which was divine!

We had bad luck again with rough seas that canceled our planned shark diving trip. So we headed up to Hermanus to see if we might see some whales from shore – no such luck!

The trip ended with a flight debacle. We arrived at noon for our 2pm flight to find that no such flight existed! It took over 45 min to even get anyone from Air Botswana on the phone to figure out what happened. Apparently they had cancelled the flight over a month prior but failed to inform us – typical Botswana! Thankfully they had at least rebooked us on the 7pm flight. We were stuck sitting at the airport for 6 hrs and were only offered a $10 meal voucher for compensation. #thisisafrica