Today we have had coffee with baboons and I have sampled my first taste of Castle beer. We have seen zebra nonchalantly grazing on the side of the road and spotted white rhino in the distance. Yes… Michelle and I are in South Africa! And it’s all in the name of work. We are here on a clickety click recce, to run through our KwaZulu-Natal tour, tweaking and fine-tuning a few elements along the way.
We flew into Johannesburg yesterday morning, having left Blighty the night before. Virgin Atlantic kindly plied us with (incidentally rather good) red wine, which ensured we woke up as the sun was coming up over the African continent, fresh as daisies and ready to tackle the five-hour drive down to Thendele Camp in Royal Natal National Park.
Sterkfontein Dam provided a welcome half-hour pit stop. A big storage reservoir,
Sterkfontein releases water into the Vaal River from the Tugela river basin,
which involves high-lift pumps carrying 160 million cubic metres of water
backwards up the Drakensberg escarpment every year – an ingenious scheme, which
took 10 years to complete.
It felt so good to be sitting in the sun after weeks of being cooped up inside, staring at a computer screen and wondering why everything in the world looks square. Here, the world just looked blue. (The blue and red dot crouching down is Michelle in her usual pose).
And onwards to Thendele!
Thendele Camp is nestled in the most spectacular setting. It is tucked
away in what feels like the middle of nowhere and surrounded by dramatic
mountain ridges, which are dominated by the renowned Drakensberg Amphitheatre.
A couple of views from our cottage...
Thendele Camp is split into a lower and an upper section and has 26 self-contained cottages that can sleep two or four people.
A typical cottage looks like this:
We have spent tonight sitting on a bench outside our cottage in the
company of a few brazen baboons, watching the sun gradually sink behind the
mountains. The colours here are fabulous, one big green mass interspersed primarily with red. Not a bad introduction to South Africa as far as I am concerned...
way to go girls! how wonderful it all sounds and looks! keep them baboons at a safe distance tho :)
lots of love from the sunny Grand Duchy
Posted by: Katarina | 10/02/2009 at 04:28 PM
You lucky two....I hope you have a great time and work really hard :):):):):)...Thank you for providing us with such great pictures and looking forward to see more....
Lots of hugs for the still sunny luxembourg
Posted by: Emmanuelle | 10/02/2009 at 05:35 PM