H has never liked the camp and I’ve been indifferent about it but I’ve now swung H’s direction. While the setting of the camp is really beautiful – on a dam with a small river flowing into it – the camp is dark and it is seriously in need of some maintenance. You simply couldn’t use the hot plate at all. I tried to boil some eggs for breakfast yesterday and after waiting about 20 minutes and I could feel no effect on the water so I gave up. Thought I would fry some bacon and eggs instead. 30 minutes on full power and I could turn the bacon over with my fingers. Gave up and microwaved the bacon and didn’t have any eggs. Also no egg lifter in the kitchen – had to go and get one from a neighboring hut (not that I used it). The cellphone signal was also appalling (but we are now at Lower Sabie and it doesn’t seem any better – the speedtest just registered 0.1mpbs!).
The game viewing in the morning was again good. No predators but two separate sightings of rhino – one right next to the road again. And the evening game drive was again a similar repeat – two separate sightings of rhino. It seems around Berg-en-Dal is the place to see rhino! No rhino for the first week and then suddenly 6 or 7 sightings (I lose track) of rhino in 2 days.
The game viewing in the camp was really good. Just sitting in our hut we saw impala, elephant, waterbuck, bushbuck and warthog. All really close to the fence. We also had a red-chested cuckoo calling in front of our hut every minute (for SAfricans that is a piet-my-vrou) and it periodically would fly down in front of hut and then see me and get a fright and head back into the trees. We also had a legavaan on our roof and above the patio. Who needs to go on game drives?!
We did have to braai yesterday evening as we had learnt our lesson from the previous night. Unfortunately even that wasn’t hugely successful as the logs in the wood we bought were so big that after 90 minutes they were still burning like I had just lit the fire a few minutes ago. We did manage to at least get the ribs braai’d for dinner eventually.
Sorry – no pics today because signal is so bad I am just hoping this posts (I know I am already almost a day late)!
P & H