South Africa | Christmas | St Francis Bay | Stormsriver | NY Eve

Day 5: Christmas Eve

Perimeter Drive of the farm fence as apparently there are always troubles at this time of year with 'illegals'.

Lot more family arrived, and the camera didn't get taken out that much anymore. This is because somebody forgot the battery pack.

Dane got a bit sick, but he got better.

Location of Danie's future hydroelectric scheme. Everyone currently thinks he might be a bit crazy, but assures us it will happen. He only wants 5kW, so it probably will which would be cool.

Dane struggles to cross the small creek and Paulette stands ready with camera and wills him to fall in.

Went for a walk and Danielle got some dirty feet. This picture isn't that exciting but from this angle it looks like she has mini-toes!

A Waterval. Kindly Paulette translates this word for Dane and yet leaves out anything else.

Day 6: Christmas Day

Up at 8ish for 10:00 game drive.

Some mad driving because Danie forgot his beer. Apparantly hitting 70kmph over dirt road reduces 70% of the bumps. However the higher 5% of the bumps put the land cruiser into orbit.

Game drive, giraffe, zebra, spingbok, few other boks. The Cradle of Life also had a sanctuary of preditory animals born in captivity. White Lions, Lions, Mountain Lions, Tiger, Cheetah, Leopard, Hyena, wolf, dog.

Lunch with all the family on the decking watching a thunderstorm role by. Run by a rich guy who has too much money and has his private garage in the restaurant. Would be good to see in a couple of years when all of his plans come to fruition.

Monopoly Game, Ridiculous.

Music in the evening, some very good guitar players.


More of the wonderful wildlife. Black with White stripes not the other way around.

TIGEEER! Only in Kenya... slash South Africa. We were protected by the fence. So was the rest of South Africa.

Mountain Lions. Paulette reckons they are a bit frisky, Dane just thinks they have a small head. Danielle reckons they were cute.

Hyena, more ugly in real life and with an odd neck. This species has a bad rep but ... really they are very ugly. For reference most of the songs sung christmas night may have been lion king.

Nice long blesbok horns.

Hoooot. This goes along the lines of crazy old rich guy. Keeps about 20 birds of prey in cages. What an odd place.

And Danielle got a driving lesson. Success! Successfully created a crowd that is, until she set off in a cloud of smoke. She did return with all the bodies in one piece.

Day 7: Second Christmas Day Or Boxing Day:

We all got up too early and were taken for an unpleasant ride on the farm. Much later, all the family in about 5 cars went to the farm to have a shoot.

A bit of packing as we prepared to move from Le Paradise to J'burg and onto PE.

Dane investigating the bullet holes. The day started with two solid aims 1) Hit the target 2) Do not hit any human-beings. Some cousin had some different aims, not hitting a bok because it cries and not hitting an animal because he didn't want to taint his current guilt free meat eating.

Paulette would only touch the toy gun. Check the previous post for the manly high caliber .367 rifle. That one caused a few bloody eyes.

How high is a waterfall? Hard to tell, so throw a rock and count the seconds then decide you can't remember how to work out how far a rock falls in 3.6 seconds. Forty-ish we decide and gave up.

A picture of those who turned up and weren't 'too tired'. From L-R, Sonya, Corne, Tiaan with Shane, Dane, Paulette, Casper, Casper, Tina, Nicko, Hanke, Josephine, Antionette, Danielle, Matthys, Betsie, Danie, Bouwer, Jacques.

Finally pictures of Danie getting someone else out of trouble after Caseper 2 fails to engage diff-lock properly.

Day 8: St Francis Bay

Travelling from Le Paradise to St Francis Bay

Had Wimpys. Thankfully it didn't rain on our trip back to Pretoria as all of our stuff was exposed on the back of the landcruiser.

Flight was delayed 45minutes initially.

The flight was again delayed due to a toilet which didn't work and BA kept on telling us not to drink too much or else we would have a serious problem.

Australia Suck.

Yup, we are in South Africa.

Day 9: St Francis Bay II

First full day in St Francis Bay

Jet-skiing in the morning followed by a nap by most of the family after lunch. Dane doesn't nap therefore decided to start updating the blog from Day 1. Such a mess of photos which aren't particularly good, again we'd like it to think this is because our camera's aren't up to scratch. But really we have little patience to set up a photo.

Night boat trip which turned sour due to rain.

Went to aunties house at 9am ish for a jetski. Good fun on the river mouth. Ridiculously expensive houses, and ridiculously expensive boats. Danielle is very jealous.

Setting out to Sea

You can get some nice air off the waves in the mouth of the river, today was a bit flat.  

Duane, Dani, Danie, Daulette, (Dane - Camera)

The King of the Rope on St Francis Bay foreshore. Not much beach about here  however there are some very nice beaches at Cape St Francis (tomorrow - this blog is still in the past)

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There may be a Bruno II en route after Karin and Paulette are awestruck at the cuteness of Benji.  Danielle is stuck by both urine and cuteness. 

Day 10: St Francis Bay III

29th December 

Got up at 8, delightful. Leasurely Breakfast watching the cricket. Went for a drive to Cape St Francis. Lighthouse, Penguins, sandy beaches.

Still no tripod how silly makes the average more average. 

Back for some lunch and to watch India Win against South Africa. 

Two Penguins standing outside the cage of some other penguins. Not really sure what this was about. 

An evil bird. We think it was kept with the penguins  to keep them in check.

In SA there are Soccer Balls EVERYWHERE - seriously every town we have driven through. And on top of that in Cape St Francis they have built new penguin-standing-soccer-ball lighthouses. 

Wind created dunes on the lovely beach at Cape St Francis looking to the lighthouse. You can see the Penguin lighthouse to the right of it. 

What is this? We dont know. But there were about 1000 of them.  First one to guess gets a prize. 

Day 11: Stormsriver

Planned to go fishing early but the weather has rolled in. No real complaints from us because it means another nice sleep in.

Headed to Stormsrivier about a 112km drive and into  Stormsrivier Village but left on the account of Danie's memory insisting that the stormsrivier mouth was not reachable from the village. We eventually got there after a change of drivers as International Persons get slogged an extra 20R over South African born. Dane gets on top early to prove South African Heritage informing the rangers to 'gaan slaap'

Home and check the weather, unfortunately still not good to go fishing, what will we do with these fishing licenses.

Hey Look! Hagar and Zits! Amusing as ever. The unfunny one was still unfunny. 

Paulettey investigating the 'Big Tree'. She gives it an 'eh' I've seen bigger. 

Meanwhile Dane climbs into the danger zone, this isn't where he had his fall.

Tarzan..... Pity this wasn't where Dane took his fall - but at least this one was caught on camera.

Lots of tourists crossing the Bridge. We were 3 of them.  

Quite a nice river here, would be a great place to kayak or other activity if the weather was more pleasant. 

We stopped by the restaurant for some good food. It's nice going and having an entree, beer and spicy thai fish curry in a potjie for less than $25. 

Danie and Dani look at what 400feet looks like ahead of a 708feet bungy jump. 

A Blue Monkey - in a tree. 

The rocks of St Francis Bay. Look to the links and you have white houses and black roofs, look to the regs and you have red roofs. Shrugs.

St Francis Bay IV

Not up for fishing at 5am again because the weather says we'd have an uncomfortable time. Starting to think our fishing licenses will be nothing more than souvenirs.

Jeffery's Bay attempted starjump + superman. 

Spin Spin Spin. Childish fun.

Amusing ourselves next to the beach and the flamingos.

"Num Num Num Num Num". 1 x peri peri chicken burger + 3 x 500g spare ribs. 

"Num Num Num Num Num"

Preparing for the end of a wonderful year. 

New Years Eve on the canals, we're on a horse. 

2010 is over.

South Africa | Farming | Kruger

South Africa:

Day 1:

Woke up at 4:30am. Peacocks up also.


The Giraffes are real and hilarious when they run.

"Thinks are looking good" indicates Paulette.

Or Not. But many blue suits means successful pass is imminent.

Or Not. The truck does not make it and Dane is left to ponder.

After a lack of hard work a break is enjoyed, a common theme.

Or just time for posing on the farm.

Part 2:

Home at 5:30-6ish and rested the sunburn. Had a early night in bed around 9, a developing theme. Really annoyed that the tripod was forgotten. But this feeling departed when it was realised that what really was forgotten was a better/bigger camera. [A genius solution awaits...]

Looking out for something.

Oh look! Black Wilderbeast.

Eland, cow-like. fatties. EDIT: Actually Redheartbeast. We ate all the eland, delicious delicious eland.

A triple of failed pictures at the highest point of the farm leaves us with one which we are comfortable at letting you see.

A big rock! Exploring follows.


We find a cave. Paulette and her Auntie Betsie.

The exploring is cut short due to rain and our cowardliness. The pictures of running away from the big rock as we were about to see if we could climb it got wet.

Day2: We are in South Africa

SA: Day 2

A particularly warm day, people were excited that we brought the good weather with us as it had been raining for the previous two weeks. Hence getting stuck on the farm with ease. So to recover from the jetlag and stay cool we headed to Badplaas.

Thingys. Round Thingys. On entering badplaas we were told "swimming costumes are important". We followed this rule reluctantly.

A series of self shot photos but Paulette thinks this is the best. Danielle managed to take about 117 photos in 5minutes without speed burst turning into a bonafide Japanese tourist.

Danielle too keen for something and drags Dane along as Paulette has no self confidence in upper body strength exercises. Jacques, one of many of Uys' cousins looks on.

Coming in to Land

Graceful landing to the disappointment of the crowd and photographer Paulette ready to capture failures.

A slide, A slide. Childhood memories reborn. Dane Wins (in style).

Another picture for Laura, notice the natural state actually being on your backside.

Day 3: Farming

Day 3 was another warm day - Mucked about on the farm before starting a fire.


Redheartbeast looking intently at us in the morning. He was a bit of a loner.

Fire.

The giraffes came out to look at the fire at one stage. Thankfully the fire was kept under control. Apparently summer is the best time for burning because it is wet season dry Winter is bad. Nonetheless we still experienced Danie and Betsie's pyromaniac tendencies.

Very pretty part of the farm. Seat and plaque where Grandpa's ashes are held.

Skull. Ask danie what it is, he will know as he found it alive.

Aww, somebody was tired. Paulette poses as she decides to let her sleep instead of waking to eat dinner.

Day 4: Kruger Crusing

Day 4:

Drive from farm to Kruger National Park flying through Nelspruit early in the morning. A bit of poor planning leads us to driving to Crocodile entrance gate about a km from the Mozambique border.

Very warm day passing 100 Fahrenheit. Deadly quiet from 12pm-3pm but some good viewings early and late.

The lack of camera and tripod combo is again a sore point, also is the continual 'slow down' of the passengers to the driver.

Paulette investigating an Elephant Skull. Our plan was to see an alive one but just in case we take a picture. Driving past a tourist guide he told us, "it's quiet it's quiet.. they are all dead". Filled with confidence we continued with keen eyes.

Following three other cars Paulette yells to stop. As we were going too quickly we had to reverse 50m, every metre Paulette less sure of what she saw only for us to find a female koedoe less than a metre from the road. And all the other cars missed it. Paulette won the spotto.

Elephant! Real Elephants! However the camera is at 3x zoom so all it is is a speck in the distance. 3 sets of binoculars in the car so we can see them better than we can take photos. Genius Solution. Binoculars + camera as seen in this picture. 10x zoom + 3x zoom and now we have a wider range of vision.

Turns out a better solution just might be to wait for them to cross the road. Cars scramble to get away from a herd of elephants about to cross the road regardless if we are there or not. We choose life. These were some of the last cars we saw for the day.

Blue Wilderbeast with binocular vision. I doubt we would've have seen him behind the tree without it.

Can't leave without seeing Zebra. Enough of them, but more of Impala. So plentiful were the Impala that we don't really want to see another so we haven't put any up for you to see.

What is this? A warthog in a drain pipe? Apparently, who knows why but we found him digging himself out.

Walking away is a mini warthog and two parents.

Also a mini monkey who was endless entertainment.

Well aren't you lucky those that viewed this far. We did put some Impala in for you to see, Probability is on your side as the Kruger has about 150,000 of them. They are pretty stupid which seemed to give Danie reason enough to try and run them down. He insisted he was just having a race but....