wrm

Lower Sabie

When we went to Etosha the idea was to eat at the restaurant. That was a disaster. We ended up cooking, completely unprepared.

So this time we took way too much food with us. Because it turns out that they recently revamped the restaurants at the rest camps in Kruger. These are now all franchises, and they are all excellent. You know how the restaurants at South African airports suck, because captive audience? This is not like that at all. The complete opposite.

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(View of Lower Sabie restaurant from the other side of the river.)

In Lower Sabie the restaurant is a Mugg & Bean. We stopped there for lunch, Tanya ordered the Sriracha Chicken, Pineapple & Avo Salad and a bottomless lemonade. I was paying attention to the wildlife, didn’t notice, until Tanya’s face started going red. Sriracha chicken is hot :-)

The bottomless lemonade is excellent, BTW. But I had beer.

I think the whole franchise thing makes the restaurants more expensive. But the quality and the experience is excellent.

2015-12-11 by wrm Kruger 2015 0

Wouter and Tanya’s Excellent Adventure, Part 3 (Kruger Day 1)

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And so it begins. The road to Malelane gate.

Checked in at the gate, got a map. My advice is, don’t bother. The free map is useless. Go to a Park’s Shop (the shop in camp) and buy the Honeyguide map. R70 but worth it.

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They say the impala wait for rain before giving birth. This is not true, but the rain is generally on time. Saw lots and lots of little ones.

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Hello Zazu.

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We drove via the S114 and S25 to Crocodile Bridge. These are dirt roads presently in pretty good condition. Along the way we spotted big five #1 (elephant, all over the place) and #2.

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Those are two rhino, asleep. Hey, it was our first rhino. Little did we know how many we would end up seeing.

(As an aside, the SANParks forum forbids discussing where you see rhino and elephant. This is in my opinion a completely knee-jerk reaction with absolutely no merit. We didn’t spot rhino and elephant in one small area, we spotted them everywhere. And as they say, past performance is no indication of future performance — by the time you get there the animals would have moved on. So feel good about not telling people where the rhino are, if it works for you — but that’s not how you stop poaching).

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Martial Eagle.

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Pied Kingfisher.

Took the tar road to Lower Sabie, checked in, found a camp site relatively close to the ablution block, parked the teardrop. Then noticed it was site #13. Hey, I have no problem with that.

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Ja, it was hot.

We took the S28, S137 loop.

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Kori Bustard.

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Two rhino.

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A Monitor Lizard.

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And two more rhino. This was turning into a nice day for rhino.

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Baby warthog are cute.

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Chomp!

We ended the day with a fairly disappointing night drive. Remember what I said about the mission being leopard? Back in 2000, Elmari and I took a night drive at Lufupa in Kafue, Zambia. They drove us up to a leopard then proceeded to follow the leopard until he caught supper. So I figured leopard on a night drive is like shooting springbok with a light. I was wrong. Even though the blackboard in camp proclaimed that the previous night’s drive encountered “leopard (with kill)” we were not so lucky. We did see some nocturnal critters you don’t see in the daytime, so all was not lost. But don’t count on the night drives for leopard.

2015-12-11 by wrm Kruger 2015 Teardrop 0

Wouter and Tanya’s Excellent Adventure, Part 2

We were on the road by 1/4 to 6.

There was a sign just outside Bloemfontein, saying that due to the roadworks it was advisable to take the R30, which from experience is not a great road. I decided to go via Bethlehem / Vrede / Standerton — a route I’ve taken before. Stopped at Pro Sport Standerton because we still needed a table, a hat for Tanya, and a braai grid. A long time ago I bought two guns off an old fellow in Vrede, and Pro Sport stored them for free until I licenced the one and a friend licenced the other. I’ll stop there every time I pass by, find something to buy. Their prices are good too.

The road to Nelspruit goes via Badplaas, a place I spent way too much time in once — but the less said about that the better I guess.

In Nelspruit we went shopping, buying food from the Spar, a cap for the teardrop’s Burquip axle from Nelspruit Trailer Parts, and way too much booze. Camped at Lakeview Lodge, again courtesy of google and a quick phone call.

Braaied a steak (on the gas braai, shock, horror – but it was good).

This little fellow came to visit.

2015-12-10 by wrm Kruger 2015 Teardrop 1

Wouter and Tanya’s Excellent Adventure, Part 1

(I’m back-dating these posts. This will probably confuse both my readers, but it will make sense in the archives. I hope).

So it was decided that we would take a trip to the Kruger National Park. At first we thought the kids would come with, but they got a better offer :-) and it ended up being just the two of us. Hey, the fewer the merrier.

Two people can fit everything and a tent in a car, but I’d already decided to take the teardrop, which still needed some more work. But all’s well that ends well, so on Wednesday the 9th of December we headed north.

The mission: Tanya wanted to see leopards and cheetahs. Preferably leopard and cheetah cubs. Playing with one another. In a tree. Oh and maybe some lions too. And I’d never seen wild dogs so that was on my list.

Tall order, I know :-/

So being, well, me, I joined the sanparks forum and started doing research. Turns out that the Lower Sabie / Skukuza / Pretoriuskop area is the place for cats, with Satara being good for lions. Or so they say. So I went online to book (the online booking is excellent. Possibly the best I’ve encountered anywhere). This was at the beginning of July, and places were already starting to fill up. I would have liked three nights at Lower Sabie, could only get two. At this stage we didn’t know whether the kids were coming with, so I booked the campsites for two people — you can change this when you arrive in camp, pay the difference.

The itinerary:

2015-12-09: Wednesday: Drive to Bloemfontein
2015-12-10: Thursday: Drive to Nelspruit
2015-12-11: Friday: Get up early, get into the park as early as possible, camp at Lower Sabie
2015-12-12: Saturday: Lower Sabie
2015-12-13: Sunday: Drive up to Satara
2015-12-14: Monday: Satara
2015-12-15: Tuesday: Drive to Skukuza
2015-12-16: Wednesday: Drive to Pretoriuskop
2015-12-17: Thursday: Pretoriuskop
2015-12-18: Friday: Spend as much time in the park as possible, leave in the afternoon, overnight at Witbank
2015-12-19: Saturday: Pick up toys first thing in the morning, head south, see how far we get
2015-12-20: Sunday: Get home
2015-12-21: Wouter back at work for a couple of days.

I didn’t really have much of a plan about where to stop over — The Formula 1 (now SUN1) chain is always good, but we have the teardrop so camping it is. Somewhere along the way I googled it and came up with Reyneke Park. Phoned them, they had lots of space, so that’s where we went.

Didn’t even bother to unhitch the teardrop.

2015-12-09 by wrm Kruger 2015 Teardrop 2

I scream, you scream

We all scream for big screan.

2015-11-18 by wrm Farting around Geek 1

Golf 4 oil change

The manual says that you should tighten the oil filter sealing cap to 25 Nm.

But of course the previous fellow who worked on the car was some type of gorilla.

So find an appropriately sized pipe clamp, tighten it around the cap…

And whack the shit (technical term) out of it.

This will hopefully be easier next time, because I’ve taken over servicing Tanya’s Golf.

2015-11-05 by wrm Cars 1

I’m at a loss for a title.

… or we shall be forced to put up a bigger sign?

2015-10-27 by wrm Farting around 0

Teardrop update

So it came to pass that Tanya and I decided to go to the Kruger National Park. Over December, which is not the best of ideas, but that’s how it worked out. It might turn out to be somewhat hot.

Accommodation up there is rather expensive, with camping being by far the cheapest option. And since we have a teardrop, we are set.

Except that the teardrop needs a bit of work.

The lexan expands a lot more than wood, so when it gets hot the entire roof pulls up. This breaks the seal, of course, and when it rains I get wet. I don’t like getting wet.

Also, I never completed the galley and inside cupboards*.

I decided to shorten the see-through part of the roof, taking it from the front to the top, not over towards the back. I’ll have to drill bigger holes through the lexan to allow it to float, and use weatherstripping rather than trying to glue it down.

Here I am using my l33t template skilz so that I can cut two pieces of ply to the right shape.

Puzzling about the layout. No, three drawers won’t fit.

(And a lot of cutting and screwing later) — Looking good.

Update 2015-12-05

So I’ve been procrastinating with the second door. It’s a major PITA. But it had to be done so…

As with the first door, I first bolted the hinges to the panel and then cut the door out. I tried to transfer the dimensions from the other side as accurately as possible.

Trimmed the hole with the same aliminium T section, and then ran into a problem. Because when I went to buy more aliminium, they were no longer there. And I couldn’t find the same thing anywhere else. Found something similar at the fourth place I looked, it just had to do.

So the trim on the second door is kind of iffy.

Let’s go.

** The Atma Travelear is somewhat above my competence level.

2015-10-27 by wrm Teardrop 1

Perhaps she even wiggled her toes

Lindgren liked to sit on the small second-floor balcony with a view of the sea. There is a bench in a corner of the balcony. Karin Nyman, Lindgren’s daughter, who is now over 80 and closely resembles her mother, says: “Take a look under the bench.”

It’s easier said than done. Dates, a few words and many stenographic symbols are written in pencil on the underside of the bench: “July 3, 1963. Summer. Radiant. Like in the good old days. The early summer was magical. I was here all of June and wrote “Michel from Lönneberga.” The book is now finished. We bought a sailboat, the ‘Saltkrokan.'” Lindgren must have laid flat on her back to write these words, with her feet sticking out from underneath the bench. Perhaps she even wiggled her toes, just like Pippi.

Read the whole article here.

2015-10-22 by wrm Farting around Get Off My Lawn 0

10 Years

Congratulations Sandra and Philip!

2015-10-08 by wrm Uncategorized 0