Hick ups

Hello again after such a long time! Yep it has been over a month that we told everyone about what is happening to our lives in sunny South Africa, so that is why we thought it might be time for an update. Well a lot happened again since the last time we wrote something down. We basically worked our butts off that is for sure. If you consider working seven days a week from 7.00 until 18.00, then you might get an idea of what happened over here. Basically all the things that we needed to do have been done. And boy what a difference does it make. The place looks absolutely stunning now.

Kim has just been in the Netherlands for the past 10 days. Sorry for the ones that she didn’t see, but of course she only had 10 days and this was her holiday! Well not really a holiday since her brother got married. Congratulations Lars and Ilona! So this meant that the first couple of days she had to organize all kind of things for the wedding. After that she visited some friends but of course she needed to spend some serious time with her parents and that is what she did! And me, I have been working so hard up here. I painted the outside walls of the guest rooms, varnished the decks, installed the pool light, tiled and grouted the pool, fixed the beams around the pool and revarnish them, fixed the satellite (yep we are finally connected to the outside world) and replaced the tap in room nr 4. This was quite a mission since we had to break out the tiles again which the tiler had placed so nicely. And there are probably quite a bit more things that I cannot remember now.

Of course there are always hick ups, for instance we decided to repaint the pool. What happened is that everything went smoothly the first day, smoothly again the second day but the third day that we painted something went horribly wrong. The epoxy layer was supposed to be hard, but it stayed sticky. After about a week it still felt really sticky. Now we started to worry and decided to send an email to the suppliers. We found out that it was bad news We still haven’t figured out what happened exactly, but we think that it might had to do with the humidity or something like that. The guys who sold us the stuff said that it will remain a mystery. We right now have to remove the top layer again with a scraper and lots of thinner. That is going to be a helluva job. Then we have to repaint the top layer again before waiting another week before we can let the water in. So no pool for us for the next week or two.

We also had our first official guests. They were Saskia and Willem from the Netherlands. They did something most of us only dream about. They drove a serious truck from Gouda (where they live) to South Africa via the west coast of Africa. And it only took them about half a year of preparation. Wow, that really sounded like a dream come true to me. But of course my time will come some day, and hopefully I can do the same thing. Only then via the east coast. My father and his girlfriend arrived roughly at the same time as well, together with Doug and Jean Evans who are really good friends of them. So that meant that we were experiencing a full house for the first days that we were open. Of course it came with some hick ups like poached eggs (how on earth do you make them?), but I believe that they quite enjoyed themselves. Thanks everyone for this “vuurdoop”. Sorry but I haven’t got a clue on how to translate this in English.

Yesterday we had another serious problem in room number one. Karen, who was staying there complaint about a leak that appeared between the tiles in the bathroom. So what we did was trying to find out where that leak came from. We had to break out four tiles. Then we had to dug deep into the soil in order to find the leak. But eventually we managed and now we need to fix it. Hopefully Ken (our neighbour from plot nr 22) will come on Sunday and can assist us in fixing it. If not we need to get a plumber in.

Of course it is not always that bad. The sightings of the wildlife have been quite spectacular. Yesterday the four of us went on a game drive through Parsons and we encountered a big herd of buffaloes (we counted about 40). For the rest it is right now dry and all animals tend to congregate near the river. So we see the elephants almost every day. We see the hippos quite regularly and the giraffes and kudus have also been spotted in our garden on more than one occasion. This all besides the usual stuff that lives on our plot like vervet monkeys, baboons, bush buck, warthogs, and so many extremely pretty birds.

Right now Kim and myself are taking it a little slower than we usually do. We of course are quite tired and need a little break. So what will happen now? We still need to put two frames together for the mozzie nets and hang them up. We discovered another leak in the back wall of room nr 3 and 4. This is thank goodness not as bad as the leak in room number one but still one that needs our attention. This will hopefully only mean that we need to take down a part of the outside wall and then fix this issue. So no more damaging of paint, tiles or anything like that. It will be just a matter of mixing quite a bit of concrete and fill up the wall again and put stones in it. So that should be done in an hour of 4.
Within a week my father and Erna will be going towards the Kruger National Park. We will go for about two days with them. We shall enjoy the peace and quiet of the KNP and at night we do a nice braai or something. Then we should have enough energy for the next session in the lodge: the guests arriving in October.