Ellies in the garden again!

Hello again,

Well I am back. Back in business and back in South Africa. In the past 3 weeks I have spend quite some time in Holland to organize some medicine, the pin code from our credit cards, and some other bank stuff that I really had to organize. Now that this is sorted, we thought that it would be nice to come back again. Especially since Kim has stayed in the lodge by herself. She did get some help from Sonia when the lodge was full but for the rest she really had to manage herself. She sure did quite a wonderful job and I am so proud of her. It was just a pity that I couldn’t see the faces of the guests when they arrived. For me it gives always such a great feeling when the experience that wow factor whenever they walk through the bungalows and have a look over our garden and the adjoining Olifants river.

First of all let me start by saying that it was an absolute pleasure to be back in Holland again. Thank you everyone for letting me stay at your place. It was great to visit so many friends and family, and I am really grateful for having such wonderful friends and family. I just wanted to give a very special thanks to my matey Roel for bringing me to the airport in Brussels and for Andre who helped us to establish a nice brochure. We really think about changing some more pictures and a little text but we will let you know what happened.

Boy was it hectic to come back from Holland and experience a full lodge right away. I hardly had time to acclimatize and had to get into the role of the host right away. But thank goodness I managed and right now it is like I haven’t been gone at all. We still have a full lodge until the end of the month, than if everything goes well, we expect another group of 8 to come in from Monday to Friday. So we just have to keep our fingers crossed. If this would be the case we sincerely hope that we have this place a bit to ourselves again from Saturday onwards.

The temperature in Hoedspruit is abnormal high for the time of the year. I reckon that at night temperature rarely drops below 15 degrees and in the day time it is still around 30. This is of course quite a good thing because we wouldn’t have liked to remain inside the whole time with all our guests. But we are grateful for this kind of weather. At night we can still sleep under a nice warm duvet so that is still a good thing.

Then another surprise got me when I just arrived here at the lodge and Kim was with the guests in the Kruger Park. First of all I heard the hippo calling in the river right in front of the lodge, then a couple of minutes later I heard some serious branches break next to the lodge. This was a lone elephant bull who decided to have a go at our trees. It was an absolute pleasure to see them this close again. However the next day it was still here and the elly decided that it was time to drink out of the swimming pool. After that it just walked very relaxed to the front yard and decided to play with our main water pipe. Of course this is what we didn’t like so Kim and I started shouting and screaming at the elephant. I quickly jumped into our vehicle to frighten it off. When I drove up towards it, he thought that it was time to split again and we haven’t seen it since. However we mixed oil with chillies and sprayed it over our water pipe in order to prevent the elephant from tearing it out of the ground even more. Stupid animals!!!

Now four of our guests have gone to the Magoebaskloof canopy tour today and the other three have gone to Moholoholo rehabilitation centre. So now it is up to Kim and myself to organize dinner tonight and serve them drinks. I am pretty sure that we will succeed in doing this. So please note, if you ever want to see elephant in the wild, just come to Kurhula Lodge in the winter!

Take care from a wonderful bushveld!