Our New Home

Life on the farm is not at all what we expected. Life tends to do that sometimes. The website helpexhange advertised free food and accommodation in exchange for farm work on various organic farms. I imagined days of getting up at sparrow fart to pack fruit, even to help pick, probably even clean the ablutions at the campsite and stroll around with a basket under my arm collecting eggs from under hedges. I had visions of Theo working on his unique physique as he dug the odd trench and cut his way through hiking trails, or do farmy type of stuff involving tractors and bales of hay.

A huge fire swept through the mountains 2 months ago and burnt down most of the farm. The owners have suffered a huge loss, loosing every single orange tree and 99% of their mangos. The land is dotted with coal black tree skeletons and the exposed mountainsides are coated in a layer of fine ash. Very little life has survived. The campsite and houses used to be a sideline but is now their only income and luckily escaped the fire.

The only hard work we have to do is lift the binocs as we study the birds in the trees. Seriously, all they want us to do here is keep an eye on the campsite. They have workers who collect the garbage, clean the ablutions, the couple of hired out caravans at the campsite and the few holiday houses on the farm. There’s no free food (luckily Theo came fully stocked just in case), but free accommodation in exchange to move the sprinklers and chase away unwelcome animals (baboons and dogs) is a pretty fair exchange I’d say.

I won’t be getting thinner though. Not at the rate Theo is cooking but he’s enjoying himself. For lunch he made a seed potbread and for supper he is going to make kebabs with chicken and the field mushrooms he picked this morning when he walked around moving the sprinklers. Ho hum, life’s a bitch.

We aren’t just vegetating though. Most days we either walk around the farm exploring, doing the easy hikes, studying our field guide books and of course there’s the sex. Were still getting it out of our systems (5 months at my mom’s house followed by nature all around us…do the maths).

Right now I’m sitting at the river side which runs the length of the campsite. What a fantastic view. We mostly have the whole place for ourselves except weekends when a few people arrive. Everything is lush and green and I just saw a mongoose dash off. Yesterday on our hike we spotted a beautiful Cape Eagle Owl which is supposed to be rare. (our Sasol bird book has come in very handy). I lost the staring competition while Theo examined the little bones in its poop. He does that a lot – poke at old poop. The campsite is home to loads of garden birds who visit us daily. We’ve learnt to identify Cape Robins, Boubou Shrikes, Cape White-eyes, Thrushes, Masked Weavers, Cape Bulbuls, Sparrows, Honeysuckers and Cape Wagtails. I’m surprised to see they travel in pairs. I kinda thought birds just fly around looking for food doing their own thing till it’s time to mate and then bugger off to be on their own again. (Except Swans who stick together for life like an old married couple.) The male birds of some species have spectacular colours whereas the females are often dull brown jobbies - opposite to humans. When another bird arrives on the scene they all screech and put up a huge fuss very much like people. I still don’t know which cheep belongs to which bird though.

Apparently there are Leopards in the mountains and we’ve been checking out spoor and poo. We haven’t been able to identify spoor yet so we are probably examining dog tracks and dassie pellets. We’re camped 20 metres from the loos and a few nights ago Theo came rushing back making funny noises while he grabbed his boots and a torch. There were 2 scorpions in the loo and a huge toad. We’d left the light on and all the goggas had made a bee line there, followed by the next food chain group. Now we leave the light off, unless in use. The moths around here are huge and when they fly into the window at night it sounds like someone banging against the bus.

We are 25 km from town – by gravel - so I expect we won’t be going in unnecessarily since we are paying our own way here – so its just us and the birds and the bees

Easter Weekend

Day 1. Spent most of the day traveling. The bus goes slow but luckily we’re not in a hurry to get anywhere. We’d smelt rubber burning occasionally (not my brains, they were on holiday) and hoped the back tyres weren’t about to blow with the extra weight at the back of the bus. We arrived at Veldrift and parked for the night at a pullover with a cool bird lookout hideout over the water. How awesome was that! We spent the evening watching water birds and had sex. Lots of it. Day 2. Once again – spent most of the day traveling. We pulled over about 30km’s from Clan William on a mountain top and watched the big sky with millions of stars and not a sound around us so couldn’t resist more sex. Theo braaied the Hottnots fish we’d bought in Veldrift. He’d sprinkled it with course salt and we ate the meat off the skin. Tasted absolutely divine. Day 3. We booked into Clan William dam for the night. Needed a shower and our fridge had defrosted. Had to throw some meat away. The temperature was over 40 deg cel. Theo braaied Jalapeño chillies stuffed with chicken and garlic for lunch. I was too scared to bend over when he stood behind me anymore. He’d stopped wearing underpants and I didn’t bother with a bra either. Life was slow and the sex was good. Day 4. The dam was kinda crowded and great if you own a boat which we didn’t so we decided to try out the other dam in Clan William – Bulshoek dam. More rustic and Easter weekend had ended so the place was much quieter. The tyres were still taking the strain, burning rubber occasionally and we were keen to get it checked out as soon as everything opened after the holidays. Next morning we stopped in Clan William, got someone to check them out. He said no worries, the bus would make it back to Cape Town where we could put more spacers on to lift the bus or alternatively replace the 2nd set of back tyres which the previous owner had removed. In the meantime Theo could bang out the tyre well. We made our way to Jamaka Organic Farm in the Cederberg feeling confident we wouldn’t wipe out. Murphy’s Law. We hit a huge stone, became airborne, we bounced, the back lift (in future referred to as our patio) rocked, the bikes strained against the tie downs and mine banged into the bus’s back window which cracked. Bummer. Oh well luckily we had taken out insurance. Only discovered the next day that my clutch lever had broken off which turned out more of a problem to replace out in the bundus. But we’d arrived at Jamaka. Jannie and Katrin seemed very nice. They welcomed us and told us all we really needed to do was keep an eye on the campsite, chase away the stray farm dogs and baboons and move the sprinklers. We settled in to our new home to see what lay ahead.

Move That Bus

Blog entry is long overdue but it’s been hectic. So much for the easy life I’m supposed to be leading. How come I feel like a blue arse fly - something doesn’t gel.

Loads of things have been happening. I’ve finished working. That was weird – walking away from a good secure job after 13 years and the pot plant I’ve stared at for almost just as long felt both exhilarating and liberating.

We’ve been getting the bus ready and have even gone up the West Coast for a weekend away to see what’s what. We nearly lost our roof air vent as we drove under the neighbourhood trees. All the way Theo sweating with each turn of the steering wheel and me bouncing with excitement. The headlights were really bad so we had to travel even slower and every now and then Theo had to wack the accelerator pedal back into place. The engine sits between our seats and we had to shout at each other to be heard above everything rattling away. We loved the trip. I expect gravel roads will be even noisier and everything inside will get coated in dust for good measure.

Theo only got the bus through roadworthy 2 days before we planned to leave. Cutting it fine - we had to postpone our departure date by a week.

He took the fridge door off to fix up the rubber but couldn’t get it back on as the plastic was so buggered we had to buy another fridge. He built two cupboards, one for clothing and one for food so packing space is sorted and I’m impressed.

He wanted to tighten the handbrake which turned into a huge mission and a big delay. The back brakes needed work and he had the back wheels off 5 times. He lost his sense of humor and smelt like the inside of a diesel engine for a week. Gallons of grease later and the drums sent off to be reconditioned (that’s when the wheels went on and off and off and on) and finally he had to attach the back platform for our bikes to be tied on. Theo had designed a platform of square tubing frame with mesh floor and bolted the whole job onto more square tubing which was attached to the chassis. After galvanizing the lot we now have an extra 400 kg hanging off the back (that’s including the 2 bikes and a huge ramp to get the bikes up there). He connected a 2nd set of lights to the back and we were ready to go.

I spent my first few unemployed days doing fiddly things like dashing down to the hardware store all bleary eyed before my morning coffee for lugs and threaded bar and nylocks and sand paper and glue and wall paper. I packed our clothes, toiletries, kitchen utensils, camping goodies and food (one whole shelf bulging with spices to satisfy Theo’s culinary needs) and we were ready to leave. It was Easter weekend so instead of rushing off to the farm near Clan William where we were going to work in exchange for food and accommodation, we planned to rather take a slow drive up, enjoy the bus and arrive after Easter since the farm was fully booked and they didn’t really have space for us.

We left home Friday the 10th April to start our new adventure. We were buzzing. My mom waved goodbye (expecting us back as we usually forgot something whenever we went anywhere). We’d enjoyed our stay with her and would miss her organized lifestyle as much as she would miss our chaos. We’d have to do without the Tequila chilling in her freezer and the blender which never materialize out of any of the boxes.

And so our trip began.