Janke & Marc's Memorable Events: Nussey Holiday November 2008

I was starting to think that I am never going to get to have a holiday again! Marc and I both have pushed our careers up a notch this year with me becoming Planning Manager at Distell and Marc's workload have just steadily increased since becoming Quality Engineer for General Electric in June 2007.

As we did not have time to plan a major holiday, we decided to stick to local - also to cut down on travel time as we only had 2 weeks to get rid of a whole lot of stress!

So on Friday 14 November, we managed to still pack the car after work and get under way in order to reach Knysna before 22:00. However, arriving at the much anticipated location (Forest Edge) we were greeted by the owners with flash lights (this should have been a hint, but we were so tired!). Turns out that a baboon damaged their transformer earlier that day, thus no electricity. This in itself did not bother us so much as the fact that the water pumps also run on electricity - thus no power, no water. They were however so kind to provide us with a bucket of water to flush our toilet with! In the spirit of being on holiday, we were not too phased as long as everything returns to normal the next day as promised.

First morning on holiday: what a fantastic hammock! It hangs in the trees just in front of the house.

So, after a quick splash in the basin we head off to Knysna for some browsing and lunch, and also to meat some friends in the evening for a braai who came through on their bikes the day before. *Mutter* we had to come on four wheels as it is a bit tricky to put 2 week's wine supply on a bike!

Louis; Jo-Marie and myself at their place in Knysna.

Marc making fire...myself and Louis watching this fascinating act.

When arriving back at our place later that evening, we find a note in our door informing us that the transformer has actually burned out and that Eskom can only replace it in 4 days! Well, as we were already going camping later in our holiday, we decided that enough is enough and booked ourselves into another place first thing the next morning. Even though we did not feel like packing and unpacking the whole week's paraphernalia, it was well worth it - even cheaper!

Here is a few pics of the new place:

We spent most of our time on the balcony reading books and drinking champagne - I can think of worse things! The highlight was the masseuse that we booked who came to our cottage - we each had a full body massage on the balcony! Sorry, no pics :).

Right next to the cottage is a path:

That leads to....

Absolutely awesome! And nothing around it except bush!

After a week we headed out to Bathurst to the farm we got married on to see Mike and Caro - especially to see Mike after the massive stroke he had earlier in the year. The farm is looking beautiful after all the rain they have had:

We did however had to survive a 11 year old's birthday party while we were there - quite challenging...:)

It is amazing how fast the kids are growing up!

We really enjoyed being on the farm again and spending time with Mike and Caro. Mike is getting steadily stronger and there is hope that he might have full function of his left hand again in a year or two - in fact I have just received an sms from him today informing me that he has completed his first honey extraction from one of their hives today!

After Bathurst we headed home to pack all the camping gear and left for Matroosberg - about 20km passed Ceres. It is really beautiful there, and for the first 2 nights we were the only people in the entire campsite - bliss! We did quite a bit of walking and I really enjoyed going for runs - with that kind of scenery around you exercise is a lot easier!