1 October 2017 to 3 May 2018.
The past six months have been a bit hectic:
Son Craig announced his engagement to Lauren,
We caught some nice fish down on the Wild Coast,
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| The trip down. |
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| Very edible Kob |
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Two Rock Salmon (Lutjanus argentimaculatus) and a Spotted Grunter
(and two Crocs) |
and did some bass fishing in the Drakensberg.
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| Girls a fishin' |
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| Stunning! |
Celebrated our wedding anniversary in seclusion on the
Drakensberg escarpment,
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| Our cottage. |
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| To 38 years. |
spent three weeks travelling through the Kruger National
Park, somewhere we have never been before, spotting over three score animal
species, including the Big Five, and 105 bird species,
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| Zebra Crossing. |
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| The elusive Scops Owl |
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| One of our camping days - 50% of the time we stayed in bungalows. |
and
on our return we found a new resident in the tree outside our home.
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| Spotted Eagle Owl |
Partied at Craig and Lauren's wedding,
and spent a most enjoyable very long weekend at the Tembe
Elephant Park.
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| Impala females - pic by Mark Turner |
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| Kudu - pic by Mark Turner |
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| Pic by Mark Turner |
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| Dust bath - pic by Mark Turner |
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| Pic by Mark Turner |
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| Pic by Mark Turner |
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| Elephants in the sunset - pic by Mark Turner |
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| Our host preparing dinner. |
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| With good friends Laurien and James |
Of course there was the delightful news that our ghastly
President was deposed by his own party and will now hopefully (one day) plead
to the 16 counts of corruption, racketeering, fraud and money laundering with which he has been charged - and
then be sent to jail for the rest of my life. But we live in a fantasy world if
we think true justice will prevail.
Talking of crooks, we also had an interesting cricket
series which made global headlines...
But now the suitcases are packed and we are awaiting the
arrival of our lift to the airport.
Something we really do not enjoy is travelling from
Charles De Gaulle airport to wherever Elle
has been moored; this usually entails taking at least two train journeys and
changing trains means lugging suitcases up and down flights of steps as we
traverse subways – my back-full-of-screws goes into serious protest mode at
this treatment. So this year we tried something different: Taking a taxi to
Auxerre was prohibitively expensive, the luggage allowance offered by the long
distance coach companies was insufficient, and I could not find a car-hire firm
which would allow us to drop the car off in Auxerre. Somehow I came across Blablacar which is a ride sharing website and the net result is that we will
now be collected from Charles De Gaulle (limited trains into Paris because of the strike) and dropped off at out hotel in Auxerre some two hours later at the princely
sum of €113 for the whole vehicle!
Our plan this year is to cruise a big 'circle'
Auxerre/Paris (two days of French Open)/Epenay/Canal entre Champagne et
Bourgogne to St Jean de Losne/Canal du Centre/Canal Lateral a la Loire/Canal de
Briare/Loing/Yonne to Auxerre or Vermenton arriving toward the end of October -
we fly back to South Africa on the 29th.
See you on the other side!
Made the news here too! The ride sharing site sounds and interesting concept - but surely you'd have to be lucky to get a ride on the day you wanted? Especially booked well ahead.
ReplyDeleteBlablacar seems to work as they have a huge membership but you either hit it lucky or find another way.
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