Back in Cape Town

The road back to Cape Town was uneventful, if long. It did seem that the weather was a bit against me, about a hour of the first 1.5 hours was spent driving in thick fog, and then from 500km still from CT I had to drive into strong wind (and it is felt with my small car) and some intermittent rain.

But after 13 days and 3200km (2000 miles) I am back home. thought I put up some pics from the trip. This was taken by my cheap digital so no photo critics.

East FS and Bloem

The road to my friend's farm was bad from the start. Out of Bloem the road had some bad potholes, the further away from Bloem the potholes became more and bigger. I am tempted to say that towards the end it turned to potholes with bits of road in between, but it was not that bad so long as you did not go over 60-80 km/h.

The visit to the farm was good. It was really good hanging with a old friend, walking on the farm talking. The farm was wet and green, the creek was more like a river. While walking on the farm my friend had to carry me across 2 streams since he had water boots on, it was quite funny. As for the rest of the trip, plans did not work out as hoped. The timing for the wild flowers and the sunflowers was a bit off and together with the rain it was not quite what I expected.

As for Bloem, I did manage to see all my friends I wanted to see and I accidentally ran into an other good friend that I did not know were in Bloem (En Mari as jy dit lees jmr dat ek jou nie voorgestel het nie). Some of the chats were good, some were... well interesting. If you take the 2 thunderstorms and some hail that fell today I am happy.

Time to go home.

home(ish)

Home did not start that well since time caught up with our old (12-13 years old) dog, her one front leg gave in and the first thing I did at home was to go along to put her to sleep. :'(

Even though I did get the feeling of coming home when I walked into my room that I grew up in, it does not feel like home anymore. It is still my room, but I don't get the same feeling of home like I do from my current flat. It also smells a bit musty. It is good to be in Bloem with my dad and catching up with some of my old friends. Certain things, like the thunder storm going on outside right now, I do miss from Bloem.

The next few days I will be going to my friends farm outside Zastron. It is in the east Free State close to the Lesotho border and right in the middle of nowhere. There is no phone reception on the farm, it makes me happy :) I also consider going up along the border to see where I end up. Only time will tell.

On a side note I did get answers/perspective to some of the questions i had before I went on leave. but more of that later

the road part 1

I hit the road Wednesday afternoon and made it to Elands Bay on the west Coast. I was just in time for the sunset. I camped just outside the town where each campsite has its own braai area and bathroom facilities. I was impressed with my new tent, but less impressed with the air mattress that still blew off during the night.


Thursday morning started early and I went to to beach where the surfers were starting into the waters since surf conditions were perfect. The road took me to Clanwilliam and from there to Calvina. For the record, Citi Golfs are not made for dirt roads. In Calvina, where my mother grew up, i hunted for skuinskoek, but sadly enought I could not find. What I did find is that the house next to my grans old house has been turned into a boutique/coffee shop/salon. I then drove to Williston where my father grew up and for the first time in my memory the Sak river had water in it. From there I drove to Carnavon and finally Loxton where I spent the night. All I can say for the road was that there were lot and lots of grasshoppers. I must have killed a few hundred with my car.

Friday was uneventfull as I made my way to Bloemfontein. The most exciting part would be that the Gariep Dam is still overflowing. Always good to be back where you grew up.

hitting the road

the time is here, time to hit the road.
the plan so far is to strike up the west coast after lunch today and then make my way to Bloemfontein by Friday afternoon via the Karoo. as it stands now I think i will stay overnight in Elandsbaai, if only to make my surfer friends jealous. as for tomorrow... only time will tell.

the last few days was spent not doing a lot, did some grocery shopping on Monday and sorted out the last of my things at the bank. also made sure that I was geared for the trip even though at that point I did not really know where I was going. I bought a tent, since it is always handy for the future, checked my sleeping bag and my air mattress (if you camp do it in style). I knew the air mattress had a hole in it so it was into the swimming pool with it. it was good since the mattress started to mold and the wash did it good. I also found the hole and patched it. also went to visit my friend to plan my bookcase, so perhaps when I am back I will have a place to put my books in stead of in piles on the floor. except for early Tuesday the day was spent in some planning and relaxed reading.

Tuesday started early for a coffee meeting with Christo to talk about a few things that are mulling in my head about work. the next few days in the middle of nowhere will give me some time to sort some stuff out with regards to life,love, work, career and responsibility. what the areas are that I am called to work in, where am I suppose to make an impact and how (if) my current work and role fit into that. the time off is needed to rest and recharge, the last year and half have been long, challenging and draining. It will also be a time to reconnect to God and get His rest and restoration.

I will keep the blog updated with pictures and stories from the travels.

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first few days of holiday

As alluded in the previous post I am on a bit of an break, almost 4 weeks of it. There was no planning that went into what will happen in this time, but rather 3 months of hard work and planning to make it happen.

So what have I done so far? Most of day 1 (half day) and day 2 went into admin, all those things you never have time for. I will not bore you with the details.
on day 3 (Friday) I went to visit a good friend on her family wine farm (Gebrielskloof) that she works at. Had a great time and a delicious lunch and massive desert. I would definitely recommend that you go visit the farm and taste the high quality wines. On Saturday went to visit some family in Paarl. They are rather unique and have surprisingly opposite/conflicting personalities for 4 people. Took my 2 cousins to Fairview wine and cheese farm since they have never been even thought it is in Paarl. There were goats.


Sunday was just spent chillaxing at home.

The ironie of it

There are a few ironic thing I noticed over the last while:
1. That in our building the people from the Virgin Active head office and call center is by far the laziest and biggest (well fattest, but I don't know if it is pc to write that..) people in the building, even thought we have a big Virgin Active gym in the building, in fact the whole floor below their head office is a gym. I would have thought that they would get discount to go gym.
2. That to be able to go on leave inevitability you end up working way harder before and after the leave period, thus ending up with about the same amount of time spend at the office as what you would if you never went on leave
3. Even though I really wanted to start writing this blog (almost a year ago) I never felt that I had the time or energy to do it.

So, back to reality, this is really the first blog post that I am doing. writing a blog is something that I wanted to do, but never have the time or energy to do. Since I now have a bit of off time I am going to make and effort to write a few post and hopefully this will continue once the break is over. so keep your eyes peeled there is a few more posts to come.

F