Better late than never

I’ve been putting this off for ages but here it is, my final Africa blog (with the ‘scoop’ on my next destination)! I’ve been home for three weeks now and I finally feel like I’m settling in a little bit (not for long though, more on that later). It’s hard to describe the feeling but the first few weeks it was like I was dreaming and would wake up back in Africa. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to be back and see everyone (and my horse!) but I felt a bit lost without the bush and the daily work with the horses. I know I’m lucky that I don’t have a job right now and can just do whatever I want for a couple of weeks while everyone else is working hard, but trust me, it gets boring. I wish I had something to structure my days a bit more. I also miss the African way of life. Only when you leave do you notice how stressed we all are worrying about silly things.

So the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to catch up with everyone back home, went on two horse riding weekends, celebrated my birthday, saw movies, had drinks and dinners and sleepovers with friends, enjoyed the lovely (and not so lovely) weather, trained my horse (I think she’s happy I’m leaving again soon) and whatnot. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to see me these past couple of weeks, I know you’re all busy but you made it a lot easier for me to be back.

Let’s get caught up on my last two weeks in Africa. I did lots of riding and training (no surprise there), taught riding lessons, we took out guest rides. One day we had guests who wanted to have lunch at the halfway point so while Sakhile took out the guests on the horses, me and two others took a van into the park to bring the food. They do these kind of things on rides often but had never done it at this particular spot because it’s not that easy to reach by car. The roads were quite bad because of the heavy rains we’d had but we ventured out anyway. Annnd... we almost got the car stuck! Thankfully we had a skilled driver who managed to turn the van around (in a quite dense forest) and we took another way around. Then we had to carry the food to the lake as the car couldn’t get that far. We managed to get everything set up just in time though and the guests loved it.

What else? Heleen came by for another riding lesson and she cantered (on her own!). I was so proud, she had improved so much and I was positive she could do it. She was (understandably) a bit nervous at first but she persisted and she did great! I tried show jumping with Camelot, who seemed really confused as to what to do with her legs when jumping but eventually loved it. Christine and I went on another beautiful ride to Sandy Point. This time I only almost died twice on that narrow, thorny path. Mariska, Christine, Martijn and I also went to St.Lucia for a day where we had the best sushi ever, betted on who could take the most selfies with different animals and took a boat tour with some hippos (and crocs). Ow and on the drive there and back we almost ran over a hippo and an elephant, no biggie.

Before I knew it my time in Hluhluwe was over and we were on our way to the airport where I arrived 15 minutes before take off and still had time to sit down and be bored (that doesn’t mean I wasn’t stressing on the way there as you can probably imagine). I want to thank everyone for making my time in Zululand so special. I feel blessed to have met you all and I’m going to miss you loads! May we meet again ;)

THE END... 

...Ow wait, you’re probably wondering what’s next (at least everybody keeps asking me that). Like I said I’m not home for long because next Friday I’m taking another plane to …*drumroll*…  Wyoming!!! I’m going back to MaeCile and the ranch (where I went on vacation last year, see earlier blog entries) to help out for the summer. I’m going to spend ten weeks riding, training, learning, exploring and whatever else comes along. And of course meeting new people and catching up with old friends. I can’t wait! Of course I’ll keep you posted through this blog so see you soon!