We were waken a number of times last night as a thunderstorm unleashed itself on the area. The lightening lit up the night sky and the thunder rattled the windows. It rained heavily and at one point it hailed and I could actually see the hail ricocheting off the windows and hoped it wasn’t hard enough or big enough to damage our cars. The lightening was so close that at one point I wasn’t even able to count to 1 before the thunder clapped and rattled the windows.
The power went off at around 5am and I lay in bed wondering whether it was loadshedding or whether it was knocked out by the storm. Fortunately it came back on just after 7am and we were able to make coffee and have breakfast (flapjacks for everyone). After breakfast B, S, H & I went for a walk up the hill (read mountain) and we did some birding as it had stopped raining. The others went to raid the original house for a grater, magazines etc and then down to reception to use their WiFi. Late morning all of them went for another walk down to the restaurant area and some had some drinks down there. I was busy doing the blog and didn’t particularly feel it necessary to brave the 10 degree C weather will a significant wind chill for a 2nd time today.
While they were down at the restaurant the power went off (around 12:30pm) and we just assumed it was loadshedding as B said it was off down there too. By 5:30pm when it hasn’t come back on again at the chalet we thought we better see what was going on especially since we could see the lights on at the restaurant. A few of them drove down to reception to discover they had closed up already but the security guard at the gate managed to get maintenance and around 6pm our power was back on. It would have been a very cold and dark night otherwise (and it is still pretty cold in our bedroom despite the heater running for the last 2.5 hours now).
The rain returned for the whole afternoon and it is still raining now as I type this blog (almost 9pm). We had decided to make some pasta for lunch which turned out to be a good call because there was no way we could braai today. It is currently 5 degrees C outside and will head down to 0 degrees tonight according to my weather app. It was a stay indoors type of afternoon and evening.
Sleep seemingly was difficult for many of us last night with the storm, headaches, noise etc and so besides A & R (who I can hear talking downstairs), everyone else is either in bed or at least in their bedrooms already.
We are all ready to move on tomorrow as we have had enough of limited electricity, heating, facilities, cellphone signal etc.
Until tomorrow ….
P, H, S (told me a closer place to see the Grey Tit which was lifer number 535 today for me), A (he drove down to find out what was going on with electricity along with a few others in the rain), B (his demotion because he has taken on H’s sickness of being a blog grammar critic), J, R (making lots of excuses why he hasn’t sent drone pics) & O (there is that red wine and ice thing still stuck in my memory)