We awake to a different sort of morning today. It has rained during the night and the morning is heavily overcast and cool. It’s very refreshing.

I’m not up long before the phone rings. It’s Pat calling to tell me that they’ll be delayed. By a puncture, no less. I put the kettle on again…..

I’m to meet the lads at the kraal so I get there early to catch up with the outside world first. But it’s outside my power to connect up. “So be it” I say philosophically. Then we pack up and head for the bakkie. It’s got a flat. (My second this week.) “Darn it.” I say. Or words to that effect.

There’s a saying that goes ‘you can only play the cards you’re dealt’. Today I was dealt the King of Spades…

The lads come for me at 7am and we go to the kraal and pick up the rifle, then we go to the workshop. We drop off yet another puncture, get a selection of tools from the store and leave Pat and Ross to sort out a gate in the welders workshop. Barry and I load up the bakkie with stone chips and head off to Gosa where there is a prefab wall to put up. On the way we stop at the kraal to pick up some string and happen to come across an operation in operation. Gus has found a Kori Bustard that was stuck in a fence and is busy trying to stitch up the damage.

We leave Danielskuil feeling a little ragged. The B&B has been absolutely fine but Jack has not. At 3am he’d woken up crying and didn’t sleep again until he was sharing our bed. Then it was us who didn’t sleep again.

We have decided to go exploring this weekend. Gus has very kindly provided us with a suitable vehicle and we,re going to go where the mood takes us. Like the Voortrekkers. And, like the voortrekkers, we’ve packed everything we own: spare clothes,toiletries, towel,snacks and drinks,toys, cameras,binoculars, maps and guides, books, sunscreen….....I’m sure you get the picture.

With the weather having been warming up over the past couple of weeks, the heather has begun to dry out enough to enable it to burn. Burning of the heather is done in order to promote new growth that is better suite to grouse breeding than the older, rank heather.

7am and the lads pick me up. They’ve had instructions from Wouter and gathered together the necessary tools so we head off to Gosa. Gosa was a farm up until very recently. The story is that the paddock there is going to be used to hold buffalo calves

We wouldn’t want to cheat a cheetah out of his lunch so we meet to get meat at 7am. Blesbok is on the menu again and to get a pot shot we brave the pot holes all the way to Verwater. To give the game a fighting chance, we leave Pat and Ross at the cruiser and Barry and I go off on foot ( and knee and stomach) to find the herd.

We’re on the airstrip by 7am and without the heat-haze get to appreciate what an extensive area of tarmac it is. Our task seems a little daunting and has to be completed before the gliders get started. We’re minutes into it when another bakkie ( or ‘buckies’ as poms call them!) loaded with troops arrives on the scene. Gus sent the cavalry!

After our sojourn on the runway, I skive off leaving the lads with a crappy job. The cruiser has to go in to the workshop to have a leaf spring replaced and while they wait for it, the lads are to clear up all the remaining debris from the site the “wire mountain” was removed from. In the meantime, Louise, Jack and I ready ourselves and go to Motse Lodge, having been invited to lunch by the Oppenheimers.

Tswalu is going to be hosting a big gliding convention over the next fortnight. In preparation for this, the lads and I have to remove all the airstrip lighting on the Southern half of the runway. (Apparently the wing-tips of the gliders might take them out otherwise.) They pick me up at 7am and we head off.

The lads and I are all psyched up for a full-on day. There’s a gate in the North part of the reserve needs replacing along with about 30m of fence either side. It’s a serious fence, with serious strainers, to retain serious animals and prevent serious loss if they escape and/or get killed on the road. Sounds like a job for the Serious Squad. Except half of them don’t turn up.

Here we are in March already and to celebrate, we decide to have a Spring Clean.( We make our own fun out here in the bush! ) Actually the truth is that Theresa returns home today and we are flitting rooms and having a good old tidy before she gets back. It all seems to take rather a long time.

I’ve finally worked out how to keep up to date with my blogs. It’s simple:- don’t do anything. I must confess that I find ‘days off’ difficult here. Back home we often use these days for catching up with household or gardening chores, visiting friends, or getting to the shops. I’ve asked some of the locals what they do and the answers were…

The reason for our early start is that Gus has very kindly offered to take us on a game-drive into the predator section this morning. Before his day’s work. The longer we’re here the more we’re made to feel like visiting ‘royalty. Thanks again everyone.

I’ve been told to take a couple of days to spend with Louise, Jack and our visitors. I feel a little guilty knowing that the lads are putting in a new gate up at Blue Sky but I’ll just have to live with it.

While typing this entry blog, I am sitting near the window and looking out over the river Esk with the hills of Invermark as a backdrop - and guess what? They don’t have snow on!
I am totally amazed at the speed with which the landscape here can change appearance.

I haven’t been here long enough to know what ‘normality’ is, but it feels like we’ve returned to it today. I pick up the rifle at the Kraal and meet the lads at the workshop. The cruiser is refueled and we wash the borrowed crew cab that the lads had been using then go to get something for the cheetah. Unusually for us, we come across a serious warthog within 10 minutes. ( How do we know it was serious? It had frown lines.)