It was pointed out that my previous blog was more than a year old and I have to admit that I dont have any excuse not to keep things more current.
My wife is still a joy. - like with wine, age brings a certain kind of calmness to the harshness that life throws at us. I find that Raquel and me gives the girls the same kind of advice whenever they need it ( or not ) The advice is usually to be kind and patient, treat friends with respect and that aggression is the final and last solution. We treat each other like that as well and it works. It saddens me to hear about friends getting divorced, having physical fights, screaming and throwing things at each other... Where has the love gone?
- English is my second language and I am frequently confused with have or has
Anycase.... We are buying a new car. The Toyota Prado drinks petrol like a hobo drinks wine and it is too expensive to keep on the road. We are changing to a Toyota Fortuner diesel. Not sure what it is called in the USA or Europe.
This weekend promises to be fun. We are going camping in the Kruger Park at a spot called Punda Maria. It is the northern most camp in the Kruger and a place that reminds one of what safari in Africa must have felt and sounded like, 200 years ago.
It does not matter if your are sleeping in a roof top tent or a chalet - when a lion roars, there is something primitive in your soul that is touched. You cant help but to have a cold shiver! There is nothing like it.
The best is to sit around a small camp fire late at night; the smoke just smells different and coffee that was brewed on a fire has an undertone of African bush that is impossible to recreate artificially. I must confess that I am a bit of a camp food foodie. We make things like Crepe Suzettes and leg of lamb on an open fire at the drop of a hat. It helps to be seriously equipped... We usually go camping with a 4x4 LDV with a roof tent and the back of the LDV filled with comforts - two fridges, easy chairs...
For the uninformed: a roof top tent fits on top of the vehicle and you need a ladder to get into it. It is quite high above the ground but feels very low when a bunch of lions walks around the car.
We were camping in the Kalahari Desert a while ago and one night, at a place called Polentswa, Raquel heard Mother Nature calling and we thought that it would be ok for her to climb down the ladder and pee outside- I just got back into the roof top tent after rescuing the garbage; some black backed jackals tried to run off with the rubbish. There were no other animals outside except the jackals and we thought it would be safe for her to squat comfortably on the ground instead of trying to hit the mouth of a container while in the roof top tent...
It is quite difficult for a woman to pee into a container... She asked again if I thought it was safe, I said that I thought so and down the ladder she went. Luckily she stopped halfway down the ladder and shone a torch to see if the coast was clear. It was not! There were about 10 lions around us! They were dead quiet... Raquel flew back into the tent without touching the ladder or the door of the tent! Funny thing was that the lions only started making noises once we saw them.
Come on weekend!
My wife is still a joy. - like with wine, age brings a certain kind of calmness to the harshness that life throws at us. I find that Raquel and me gives the girls the same kind of advice whenever they need it ( or not ) The advice is usually to be kind and patient, treat friends with respect and that aggression is the final and last solution. We treat each other like that as well and it works. It saddens me to hear about friends getting divorced, having physical fights, screaming and throwing things at each other... Where has the love gone?
- English is my second language and I am frequently confused with have or has
Anycase.... We are buying a new car. The Toyota Prado drinks petrol like a hobo drinks wine and it is too expensive to keep on the road. We are changing to a Toyota Fortuner diesel. Not sure what it is called in the USA or Europe.
This weekend promises to be fun. We are going camping in the Kruger Park at a spot called Punda Maria. It is the northern most camp in the Kruger and a place that reminds one of what safari in Africa must have felt and sounded like, 200 years ago.
It does not matter if your are sleeping in a roof top tent or a chalet - when a lion roars, there is something primitive in your soul that is touched. You cant help but to have a cold shiver! There is nothing like it.
The best is to sit around a small camp fire late at night; the smoke just smells different and coffee that was brewed on a fire has an undertone of African bush that is impossible to recreate artificially. I must confess that I am a bit of a camp food foodie. We make things like Crepe Suzettes and leg of lamb on an open fire at the drop of a hat. It helps to be seriously equipped... We usually go camping with a 4x4 LDV with a roof tent and the back of the LDV filled with comforts - two fridges, easy chairs...
For the uninformed: a roof top tent fits on top of the vehicle and you need a ladder to get into it. It is quite high above the ground but feels very low when a bunch of lions walks around the car.
We were camping in the Kalahari Desert a while ago and one night, at a place called Polentswa, Raquel heard Mother Nature calling and we thought that it would be ok for her to climb down the ladder and pee outside- I just got back into the roof top tent after rescuing the garbage; some black backed jackals tried to run off with the rubbish. There were no other animals outside except the jackals and we thought it would be safe for her to squat comfortably on the ground instead of trying to hit the mouth of a container while in the roof top tent...
It is quite difficult for a woman to pee into a container... She asked again if I thought it was safe, I said that I thought so and down the ladder she went. Luckily she stopped halfway down the ladder and shone a torch to see if the coast was clear. It was not! There were about 10 lions around us! They were dead quiet... Raquel flew back into the tent without touching the ladder or the door of the tent! Funny thing was that the lions only started making noises once we saw them.
Come on weekend!