230213, A river ran through it

This picture was taken on Sunday morning, after possibly the most crazy flood night I've experienced up to date.  The river started to flood at about 1am on Sunday morning, the sound woke me and I was not sure what it was since it had been raining quite hard and non-stop for a long long time.  But I was awake and occasionally tried to look out the window to see if it's getting higher.  I could see Ace, the night guard with his torch, walking around and checking the water levels. I also packed a little bag with the most essential things and went out to put it in my car and move my car higher up.

   I heard Aquila (the Boerboel, sleeping in my tent) give a whimper at some point in answer to a frog croaking.  That's when I thought that if the animals are worried it's probably time for me to also start worrying.  It had flooded before but didn't come as high as where I am currently parked, so I did not expect it to get that bad.

By 3am it got serious.  Suddenly the water was inside my tent and I had to wake Aquila (the Boerboel)  to get her out of there. . .  All the time it's pouring down.  From then on it all happened pretty fast.  Ace and Dewald (the camp manager) came to help me carry everything out of my tent.  By this time the water was suddenly much higher and a lot of things just floated off.  I was standing knee deep in water inside my tent looking around at these waves washing through, not knowing what to grab and what to let go, yet feeling strangely calm through it all, knowing Jesus is right there with me in the storm .

 I had to go back and and pack more things from my caravan cause now it looked like there is no stopping to the rising of the water. I then went to take shelter in Dewald's house and found I was not the only one packing even though the other people were much higher than me.  I must say at that stage I was mostly just histerically laughing at the reality of everything.  We were making jokes about packing up and going.   The water rose up to the caravan's entrance and there it stopped and went down.  It's amazing how quickly it goes down again once it's reached the peak.  

It was not the end though.  I was just starting to relax a bit when Dewald told me to come quick. A tree had fallen over on top of my car!  Luckily just the branches, so I moved it out without any damage.  But what I was shocked to see then was that the wind had come up and ripped my whole complete tent of the ground and  all the poles were out.   That has never happened before.  At least there was nothing left inside the tent.  As if that was not enough the wind also broke my caravan's window out.  That is a bit of a problem that is going to be hard to fix.  And the rain pours in...

From there I went over to stay at some kind people's house and got dry and tried to have some sleep.  The rain still didn't stop.  The rain measured on Saturday was 160mm.  The rain measured for Sunday was 300mm.  I anticipated another flooding.    

The water went all the way right up to the little fence you can see on the right.  

To my horror I was right.  On Monday morning when I went back, I was faced with the aftermath of a small natural disaster.  The previous evening at about 7pm, that river flooded again and this time went even much higher.  The whole campsite had to evacuate.  Everything on my side was in shambles.  I was still hopeful that my seedlings were going to survive, because some were still standing on top of the braai after the first flood, but when I got back, there was not even a single braai left standing.  The water went into and through my caravan.    I am soooo thankful I was not there to experience that. 

Mama Grace came around and helped me get the caravan floor cleaned of all the mud that washed through it.  Funny how she's always helping me with mud on my floors.  Previously she had to put it on (The Reading Hut floor) and now she had to take it off.  Anyway I am so thankful for that because it made me a bit despondent to see that and she just took care of it for me in no time.  Thank the Lord for Grace...

 The campsite after the storm

Here you can see exactly where the water went through the caravan

250511, The great trek

Oke, it’s been a while since I had the time to write.  Kind of a lot has happened!  Of course, by now you would’ve guessed, my caravan is here!!!

Donovan drove almost through the night and arrived on Sunday morning at about 10.  We immediately started putting up the tent, which was the first time putting up this tent and we had to figure out some stuff, but it went quite smoothly. 

We hardly had the tent up when 3 half-dressed Bangladeshi guys gathered themselves and their bottle of brandy on the camping spot right next to ours – while there was a huge stretch of space further that they could use.  Well, I guess they were quite drunk and it didn’t take them long to invite themselves over and make themselves (and the brandy) at home right on our ‘stoep’, inviting us to share their brandy.  Well, being a Sunday morning and all, we didn’t really feel like accepting and well, I was also still busy trying to unpack and get some order.  So Donovan tried to keep a decent company and not be rude to the guys, while they were basically shouting at each other and ‘talking over the phone’ but more like screaming into the phone as if having an argument or something.  Very strange.  The one guy even went for a piss in the river, right in front of me.  I’ve never met such a rude and disrespectful culture. (In fact I can’t believe that such a disrespectful culture exists, so I suspect they acted like this on purpose to drive us out of the campsite) It turned out that they actually live on the campsite and run some shops around the area.  And there are more of them.

They then continued their screaming and shouting and luckily moved a few metres off.  So, I picked up their now empty bottle and their shoes that they left in front of my tent and took it over to them.  Thank God they didn’t come back.  But, later when I wanted to take a shower I met 2 of them in the bathroom and I knew that I couldn’t stay there.  Especially not when Donovan leaves.  Such a pity, because it’s really a beautiful camping spot right next to the river.

I was so thankful for my first nights’ sleep in my caravan, a gigantic improvement to my previous 2 weeks painful sleep on a bad bed and the hard floor.  But no relief from my cold showers yet!  I was so looking forward to that.  And the showers were really bad, like absolutely nothing to hang your clothes or towel on and the floors are completely wet, and of course my warm top had to drop on the floor and get all drenched!  There is a new bathroom though, just a bit of a further walk, but much neater and with a gas geyser that unfortunately didn’t work either…  But at least no Bangladeshis in this shower!  

There was a very friendly night guard and 2 self-employed dogs that became our watchdogs.

Anyway, we went to check out another campsite just a little further.  It’s not that pretty all next to the river, but definitely safer and the bathrooms are also much friendlier.  So, yesterday morning we packed up the tent again and moved.  Bit of a mission, but we’re becoming more experienced campers now!  And I’m so thankful for Donovan being here, cause I actually need quite a lot of help with all sorts of things that you need a real man for!  We survived the first rain on the tent last night!

Oke, lots more to be told, but watch this space (I need to go for a shower now and start this day), this story will continue!

In the beginning...

As a child we used to do a bit of road-tripping during the holidays. The Kruger Park was my favorite place on earth, maybe it still is. That's me, in the green.