Driving around

We tried to leave early, and put the alarm on for 6. Most things went according to plan in the morning, but I hadn't taken into account the possibility of a strong wind and rain in the night.

The cover of our roof was partly blown off in the night, and so there is now water in the loft area. There was nothing I could do about that, so I haven't worried about it at all. The nightly insidence that took my time this morning was the glass-fiber insulation in the swimming pool. It had been packed into black bin bags. A bag and a half had gotten into the pool in the strong winds, and I got wet trying to fish it out.

We were almost a half an hour late when we left the house. Luckily there was no traffic.

We drove through a town called Worcester. We saw a sign that said the safari park was about 10 minutes drive away. After about 10 minutes we came to roadworks, which took us 15 minutes to clear. By this time we'd been driving for an hour and 50 minutes, and we had a half an hour to get to the safari.

We continued on. We knew we'd need to take road R46 to the left, but as we drove, and drove, and drove, there was no road R46. We had 10 minutes to get to the safari, but we were just driving on this road with no signs of the safari park. The sign had said 10 minutes, and we'd seen the sign 45 minutes ago.

I tried to phone the safari park, but there was no network. Dan, who was driving, agreed that we should turn back. He commented that it would be awful if the place was just round the corner and we'd turn back - but there was no way anyone could call this drive 10 minutes, so we decided to turn. We'd been driving for 2 hours 15 minutes, and the deadline was 5 minnutes away.

Finally I got network. I phoned Seija, who told me Tapio's phone number. He'd just been at the park a couple of weeks back. I phoned Tapio, who told us we were almost there, and there it was! R46! Dan and I had decided to turn around only minutes away from the safari park - a good thing we didn't.

We had a delicious breakfast at the park, and then got on a 4X4. It had been raining most of the way, but luckily it wasn't raining now. The weather was miserable enough as it was: cold and windy. We were all shivering under our fleece blankets. We were driven around the park for 2-3 hours. We saw a rock painting, hippos, a giraffe, antelopes, rhinos, lions, zebras and 2 elephants. We got to feed the elephants, who were in an enclosure of their own.

We were all freezing after the drive, and sat in front of the fireplace for most of the next 2 hours. Milja and Dan got to pet cheetas, we saw some crocodiles and had a wonderful lunch.

I drove back while the others slept most of the beautiful journey. I checked the sign: it said 40 kilometres, not 10 minutes.

This country is so pretty it's impossible for me to describe. The road we took today was lined with mountains for a lot of the way. Now that it had been raining there were tens of high water falls, and there was clear water rushing along in the ravine. The fynbos bushes are flowering with the most magnificient, strong colors. I saw flowers of strong yellow, pink, purple, maroon and white colors. I wish you would have been here to see them.