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 ;)