Of holidays and day trip

Hello to all our regular readers.  We hope the white space of the past two months hasn’t put you off too much!  A combination of a lot going on and laziness is to blame, mostly the latter.

When last you left us we’d been playing Wii Sing and Disney Sing It.  Having cut back on our efforts to avoid a South African ASBO our attention turned elsewhere…

The brain is a bit fuzzy as to everything that has happened in the past couple of months so expect a few entries (and plenty of photographs).

Quick Status Update:

• Guy – still working too long and too hard but since he isn’t meeting several of his targets obviously not too clever (his words not mine)!
• Charly – still fed up with her fitness levels.  Not helped by falling over a couple of weeks ago on the small step outside the apartment and managing to get what the doctor reckons is a hairline break in her ankle.  Now enduring six weeks of wearing an ankle brace.
• Rhiannon – in February had no wobbly teeth and now has 4 wobbling plus 1 coming through behind her milk teeth.  She is still loving school and doing very well.  Her colouring and drawing are improving a lot and her fear of swimming has mostly disappeared, helped by her school lessons and swim gala performance where she came a close second.  She was using a float and had one of the high school girls swimming next to her, but did a great job and could have won if she hadn’t been so busy talking to her friend in the next lane as she swam!

• Phoebe – is still a little devil, adorable and loved by everyone but a wilful horror at other times, and unfortunately going through a bit of a tantrum phase if she doesn’t get her own way on everything.  No more hospital visits yet though!  She is having great fun at school and has just started “Playball” on a Thursday afternoon, learning basic ball skills.  Next stop, Arsenal Ladies Team Nana!

Phoebe tries her hardest to go head first into the pond

• Apartment – now lit again after the landlord had most of the fittings replaced – those of you contacting us on Skype unfortunately will get a clearer picture of our faces from here on.  With the lights fixed the next problem was the leaking ceiling last weekend!  Our upstairs neighbours did some work on their balcony and have some built in flowerbeds that were not sealed properly hence a day of dripping brown water over the sofa.  For now that is sorted as well – just the ants to get rid of but we think we are fighting a losing battle there.
• Monkeys – still around – their latest home invasion was to steal Charly’s crackers from the lounge when she was out the room for a couple of minutes.  They proceeded to eat the crackers on the balcony in front of her.

Tina (sister / sister-in-law / aunt to the various members of our family) visited for 2½ weeks at the end of March, bearing gifts of Easter eggs, Clarks sandals, a replacement iPod (after Guy left the old one in the car (where inside it hit 40ºC plus and the display subsequently failed), two DVD boxsets and Super Mario Bros Wii.  Be warned that we expect this sort of service from all visitors – bookings welcome and Amazon orders ready to be placed.

During her first week here the girls were still at school so a few lazy days were had before she ventured off on a day trip to Lesotho, taking in the Drakensburg enroute.  This meant that Tina had ventured further afield in a week than we had managed in 10 months!

For the first week of the school holidays Guy actually took 4 days off.  The shock was so much he still went into work for an hour on the Wednesday before Easter to show his face at a leaving do for someone who’d been at the company for over 30 years – he then met up with everyone else to watch “How to Train Your Dragon” in 3D at the cinema.  Phoebe seems to cope very well with the cinema as long as she has some popcorn in front of her.  Her technique for coping with the more scary bits was to lift the glasses up so her vision was blurred, but she would put them back on again fairly quickly.

From the 26^th to the 29^th March we went on safari, or at least headed 3 hours north to Rhino River Lodge (does exactly what it says on the tin except that the river was dried up), situated on the outskirts of one of the largest reserves in the country (not on a par with the Kruger, but the Hluhluwe (pronounced shushluay sort of, apparently that’s the closest non isiZulu speakers get to it) Umfolozi (pronounced umfalozi) are pretty impressive.  The humid summer in Durban was easing off but when we arrived at the lodge the temperature was 39ºC.  We stayed for 3 nights full board, and made the most of it!  On arrival we went straight to lunch and then got straight onto the off-roader for the afternoon / early evening game drive.

The warm weather appealed to the wildlife as well – we saw both black and white rhino, zebra, warthogs, impala, nyala, kudu and the eyes of a crocodile!

Having taken games with us to play expecting a few quiet nights in we ended up actually getting to bed early (for us) each night, since the combination of 6.30am game drives, 3 multi-course meals a day plus a lot of fresh air and the heat knocked us out. BTW much to the slight horror of one American lady also at the lodge, meals included impala (in a pie and casserole) and warthog (yummy sausages).

We also saw a large number of spiders during the game drives, mainly two particular varieties, the Bark Spider and the Golden Oak spider.  Those of you with a fear of spiders (Charles) please look away now:

There were no elephants in Rhino River’s part of the larger game reserve when we visited, but we did get to see a few giraffes during our stay.  We also went out the reserve to visit a family of rescued elephants and all took turns to feed them – Charly even got a lift:

On the Monday we skipped the afternoon game drive and went to a large cat rehabilitation centre, where there were African wild cats (which look like large tabby cats); serval (a bit like small cheetahs); caracals (pointy eared lynx that can jump several metres) and cheetahs (who we tried feeding Guy to and who Tina wanted to steal).

When we got back from the safari we went on a day trip up into the Valley of a Thousand Hills to a “traditional” Zulu village

And on another day took  a trip to Durban Botanical Gardens, where Guy actually relaxed!

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