Elephants, floodings and camping trips

I can’t believe it’s almost the end of May. I’ll be leaving this amazing place on the 6th of June, only ten days from now. Time really flew by. It’s like I said in one of my blogs last year, it simultaneously feels like I only just got here and like I’ve been here forever. I do miss my friends and family back home and of course my own horse but I really can’t imagine going back. I’m still having so much fun here!

It has been quiet at the lodge this month, it’s almost weird to have guests around. Now that we don’t have as many guests wanting to ride, we have some more time to train the horses ourselves. I’m still working with the 2,5 year old, he is doing great! He’s a really fast learner and isn’t scared of anything. A couple weeks ago, I put a saddle on him for the first time and he was completely fine with it. No matter what I did, from putting it on his neck to dropping it behind him, he didn’t even blink. Yesterday I lunged him with a bit for the first time and even the steering went great. The only thing we are struggling with is the canter. He’ll just trot really fast but it takes a lot of effort to get him to canter in the arena. I decided to ride another horse around the property and lead him on a halter. At first he almost dragged me from the saddle because he didn’t want to move, but eventually he followed us and even cantered. The camping guests were laughing at me as I kept passing their tent with the horses.

I teach a lot of horse riding lessons at the moment. Mariette asked me if I wanted to do a riding lesson with her daughter and two of her friends’ kids. One of the kids, Evan, has already come back for two more lessons and his mom, Heleen, also wanted to do a riding lesson. She wanted to practice canter, because she had been on a ride with us before, but she still felt a bit unbalanced. We did some balance exercises in trot and she improved so much after that. Attila looked like a completely different horse, he was so much more relaxed and her seat was so much better! I train two or three horses a day, which keeps me busy. It is really nice though, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the amazing scenery here. Christine helps out with the horses a lot, we get along really well. We’ve got a similar work ethic I guess, same ideas about the horse care and she’s a great person to talk to. We have a lot of fun. Besides all the riding we are still working on a new project concerning the horses as well (more on that soon hopefully).

What else? We’ve been having some cold weather. Two weeks ago it was raining for three days straight. I got so bored because we couldn’t do much with the horses and there was not much else to do either. We all just sat in the bar all day (in five layers of clothing because it was freezing) and watched tv shows and movies. Even in my room it was freezing because I don’t have windows.. The one night I went back to my room after watching a movie in the bar and I heard a weird noise coming from my room, like running water. When I opened the door I saw the bathroom sink had exploded and was gushing water, the whole bathroom was flooded. I ran back to the bar, hoping to catch Michaela before she closed up. I think she thought I was under attack with the way I was yelling. She helped me look for the switch to turn the water off, which was somewhere in the bush, in the middle of the night. I couldn’t use the bathroom for two days. We’ve also had a lot of power outages, especially in the evenings. That’s life in Africa I guess ;)

We went on another game drive in the Hluhluwe Park. We were having a braai at one of the picnic spots in the park when we suddenly heard a growling noise. At first we thought it might be a lion so I walked back to the car to get my camera when I saw it was a big group of around 25 elephants bathing in the river. They were having so much fun swimming and playing, it was an amazing sighting. We also went camping in Ithala, a nearby reserve. It might be the most beautiful park I’ve seen so far. It had some amazing viewpoints, beautiful hills and it was a bit more open than the Hluhluwe Park. The campsite was next to a river where we had drinks in the afternoons, we did a couple of drives through the park, had a braai, did some stargazing, talked around the campfire. It was really nice to be away for a couple of days and just relax.

That’s it for now, I’m going back to denying the fact that I have to leave soon, if you don’t hear from me again I decided to just not get on the plane and stay here forever ;)

Follow the sun

It’s been awhile since I last wrote, and no that is not because I was eaten alive by mosquitoes. There actually haven’t been as many mosquitoes now that it’s getting closer to winter. There aren’t as many guests either (not that the two are related ;). April was a busy month with both guests at the lodge and horse rides but now we have two days where there are no guests. It is really quiet around here, especially at night. The animals have been acting a bit strange as well. We are all sleeping with radios next to our bed so we can inform each other when we hear something. It is making me a little paranoid to be honest. Yesterday evening I thought I heard gunshots while it was actually just Nathan slamming his car door shut..

Last week (or the week before? I can’t keep track of time) we went on another beach trip. This time to 9 mile beach (not to be confused with green mile ;). To get there, we had to drive over a sand road for about an hour. It sure was an experience, bouncing around in the car, with seven people in one vehicle. I think some of us might have gotten a mild concussion that day ;). The beach was worth the trip though, it was beautiful. It was very secluded so we had it to ourselves for most of the day. The waves were pretty strong though, after every wave I had to check if my bikini was still in place. On the way back I got to drive, I’m still not sure whether that was because people actually trusted my driving or just didn’t want to be the designated driver. It was my first time driving on the left side of the road (for longer than five minutes) but I got everyone home in one piece. We even saw a rhino on our drive home, quite surprising considering there was a party going on in the back seat and they could probably hear us coming from miles away.

Yvette, Rick, Wesley and I also did another trip into the park, the Imfolozi side this time. We left at 5.30am because it’s a bit of a drive. Unfortunately we had had a party the night before, which Yvette and I left quite early, but *some people* had only had 2.5 hours of sleep. Thanks again Wesley for not crashing the car and Rick for grabbing the wheel every once in awhile ;) We saw a lot of animals (a group of zebra that seemed to be following us around) but sadly no wild dogs (the one animal I still really want to see in the wild) or lions and leopards for that matter. I did see a giraffe! That made me ridiculously happy as I hadn’t seen one here yet. Also more rhino’s and a lot of elephants (in the middle of the road..). The scenery that side was great though! The only downside of that part of the park was that there was no restaurant so we had to survive on cookies that day :P

Since we were used to getting up early anyways we decided to do a sunrise ride with the horses the next morning. This time we got up at 4.30am to get the horses ready and ride out to False Bay before 6.15am. We arrived just in time to see the sun rising above the mountains in the distance and then disappearing again behind a cloud.. We did see the sun rise a second time that morning as it came out from behind the clouds ;) It was beautiful, really the perfect spot to watch and the horses were great even though it was still dark out when we left. Thanks again for getting up that early Yvette and Wesley! At least we got loads of beautiful photos ;) Hopefully we can offer these rides to guests in the future as well.

Sadly, Yvette, Rick and Wesley went back home last week. It was great meeting you guys, see you again here next year?!