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.

Bush Wacking

I’m starting to have my doubts whether spending R13 000 each (a chunk of my pension) on a 28 day Field Guide Course is a good idea for me. I’ve checked out job offers for couples at Game Lodges and they seem to want the guy to take the people into the bush to look at the bokkies and they want the chick to stay home and answer the phone. Probably rightly so since imagine me out there in a jeep with 6 Americans in the back going Oh My God, Oh My God as I disappear into the sunset without a clue as to where I’m going. I rely heavily on GPS and without my glasses I wouldn’t know the difference between a baobab or a boa constrictor.

One of the subjects the course covers is Astronomy. My current knowledge of the stars is that if you join the dots then you can outline pictures of Greek Gods and scorpions but you have to stretch your imagination big time and I know the southern cross is supposed to help you find your way but I’m not quite sure how it works. I mean if I follow a star like the 3 musketeers did, the direction seems kinda vague. I’d just keep going and going in a straight line as if I was chasing the end of a rainbow to the end of nowhere. Can’t see how that would get me back to the lodge after a night of game viewing with 6 Americans fretting in the back seat.

Another subject is Amphibians. I think that’s creatures who live in the water but who aren’t fish. And I have a feeling its limited to fresh water i.e. an octopus is not amphibian but a frog is. I’d need some brushing up on that I suspect.

Reptiles. Crocodiles are dangerous and you can make handbags out of them but I’m not sure what they do with the pointy bits. Face inwards possibly? Digging for a tampon in the bottom of your handbag would be a mission mind you.

I’ve just checked - another subject is Arthropods. And here I thought that was the name of a fatal disease. After reading further I realized its spiders and insects. Funny, I’ve been pondering about Mosquito’s lately. As far as I know it’s the female who bites you and sucks your blood for a meal. So what I’ve been wondering is what does the male mosquito eat to survive? The female? I mean what species, (other than humans where the male can survive on meat and the female on chocolate) do the males eat one thing and the females eat a different food type. I’m puzzled.

Actually all the subjects offered in the Field Guide Course do intrigue me. I’d like to know more about the moon and how it magnetically pulls the water in my body towards it. I’d love to know more about animal hierarchy – I think animals are way more intelligent than humans realize. I’m also intrigued by mans development through the stone and iron age. Learning about botany (possibly even lobotomy) wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I think it will come in handy when the budget is stretched and we need to know which leaves are edible to chuck in the stew.

So doing a field guide course would be interesting and maybe I wouldn’t be expected to be all gung-ho and carry a machine gun over my shoulder to protect the Americans from a charging rhinoceros. Mind you it sounds more appealing than hanging a toilet brush over my shoulder and answering the phones.

I’ll think about my options some more while I try and figure out where the heck Mpumalanga is. I still work on the old system of Transvaal and Free State so I think I have enough stuff to think about before I find time to count the legs on spiders and insects to see what category they fall into. Next week I’ll get the magnifying glass out cos I’d be expected to know the difference between a millipede and a centipede and as far as I can remember we’re talking a lot of legs here.

The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round

The bus is parked along the side of the house and my mom is keeping a watchful eye on the state of each blade of grass underneath. I’m really glad that we settled on a smaller vehicle since this one is just about ready to go which makes things much easier. The bus is actually a converted D400 Ford truck. Still has the chassis and engine but aluminum caravan type body. Theo drove it down to the garage at the crack of dawn to get the tyres pumped and to get the hang of taking a corner before the rest of Monte Vista woke up. The seller had delivered it to us so it was Theo’s first time behind the wheel. The sweat poured off him since the bus doesn’t have power steering and maneuvering the thing was a new experience. I bounced up and down with excitement on my couch seat while he worked on his abs. We were both grinning from ear to ear by the time we stopped at the garage and everyone came over to inspect our “tortoise house” as they called it.

Our goal now is to get the necessary stuff finished to be able to roadworthy the bus but we fiddle around with other fiddly bits as well. I’ve had my head and shoulders wedged into a dark rusty storage box in the floor to hold the back of a nut in place for Theo to screw the bolts in place. I’ve had the vacuum cleaner hose inside the engine housing box (which is inside the bus nogal) to suck out cobwebs around the engine. We’ve bought a spare tyre – I’m talking truck tyres here which don’t come cheap and a deep cycle battery to give us power. Theo has almost finished with the lights and fixed the handbrake cable, bled the brakes and needs to replace a metal plate on the under carriage which is too rusty. He sorted the front wheel bearings out - the master cylinders had to be resleeved before it moved anywhere. Holding thumbs the back ones are ok. We are also pottering around inside fixing door handles etc and I’m making curtains. I’ve made a headboard and am having all the cushion seats recovered. Theo still needs to sort out the shower floor, the roof vent, build a small cupboard for more packing space, and he’s had a look underneath and is pleased that we have water tanks, sewage tanks and there’s space for our vegetable oil tank. Remember, our idea of running on cooking oil? Well that part must still be sorted but will come later. And then of course there’s the trailer or possibly some kind of hydraulic ledge for the bikes and the storage box.

We are working at a leisurely pace but hope to get going the beginning of April. We both resign end February - thats like in 3 weeks - ooh scary - no turning back now. I work to end of March but luckily Theo is able to take leave after his resignation date so he will have time in March to pick up the pace a bit. He writes his code 10 learners on 1st April - ominous date I know, and then we are both doing a 3 day first aid course at St Johns before hitting the road.
Yeehaa - cant wait for end of March to come.

BUSH BUS

So I think our camper bus needs a name. My mom said that my dad used to call us the Flintstones. I can’t imagine why – I don’s see the link even if my mom does – anyway we considered using it as we will be getting back to our roots. I prefer the name Bush Bus since we will be spending a lot of time travelling through the veld going nowhere slowly. Getting a bum rash from our Baz Bus. Say that fast after a tequila. It’s not really a bus though, nor is it a regular camper. Maybe we’ll just call it the van. So long as it gets us there. There being wherever we’re going. We probably do need some kind of direction. We want to stop off at a few friends around the country and from there explore Mozambique and then end up on back in the bush.

Actually I have done loads of investigating and in the beginning my idea was to work at game lodges doing something involving nature. I never knew exactly what but I wasn’t too worried and visions of me walking around with a chimp on my hip sounded fantastic. Theo had visions of himself shooting the odd rabbit or guinea fowl with his pellet gun and cooking it in some unusual way out in the veld, possibly with a pigeon up the bum; the guinea fowls not his. I’m not sure if he was hoping to bump into a bushman soon after the kill to pluck or skin the thing for him although he’s not sqeemish and has gutted and skinned a small buck in our backyard once when his folks accidently knocked it down, killing it. That important lesson in life was if the intestines are damaged the meat will taste like shit. Literally.

Anyway so all my research came up with some feasible options. I found a cool link called www.woofing.co.za. (World Organization of Organic Farming). They are much bigger overseas but there are some in SA as well. They are organic farmers who take on volunteers offering them a room and meals in exchange for free manual labour for a minimum period of 2 weeks at a time. There was one particular one which caught my fancy. A piggery taking volunteers to help make smoked bacon etc. Theo would be in his element to be able to churn out km’s of chorizo sausage and see how other people process pork. I’d be able to work on getting a flat stomach shoveling pigshit for free board and lodging. How cool is that. Another farm which caught my fancy was the dairy. Free opportunity for Theo to make all kinds of smelly cheeses and I could fondle cows udders and shovel more shit. I worked in a cow shed on a Kibbutz 20 years ago and loved it. Getting cow shit splattered in my hair won’t faze me.

Working at game lodges would probably be easier if we have some kind of formal training so I scanned the internet until I found something to get us started. I’ve printed loads of online info about safari tour guides, eco guides, front office and game ranger training courses and am sucking up every bit of info I can and loving it. We are also going on a first aid course which will help for employment in that line as well as being useful for us on the road. Theo will get his code 10 and PDP, necessary to drive the van and also necessary as a game guide.

Theo might be able to supply farm stalls with his booze making, sausage making, atchars and pickles or he might be too busy leopard crawling through the grass to shoot a dassie for supper. Me, I might be in the background practicing to kickstart my dam bike and developing thunder thighs to match my wash board stomach from all the shit shoveling.

Can’t wait to find out what lies ahead.

Stop The Bus

Talk about dragging something out. Jeez. Well the good news is we’ve eventually bought our bus – turns out it’s more of a camper bus than the moerse big bus we originally dreamed about but nonetheless we are chaffed. Actually buzzing, doing flick flacks cos things are finally coming together.

December was a bit of a bummer month. I’m not referring to the 6 kg’s I picked up while on leave or the withdrawal symptoms I suffered from missing free internet access at work and being able to make a phone call without thinking twice. The bus saga brought me down cos we had a stunning party bus lined up and then if all fell through. Theo and Keith (my brother in law who knows about diesel engines) caught a greyhound up to Bloemfontein to buy a party bus for sale up there. The guy said the engine was great and we had visions of doing a few party trips and making some moela from the bus while tackling the outside renovations. I’d started phoning to make enquiries about public liability and visions of us taking party groups on trips to the beach and Theo whipping up a seafood braai all fell by the wayside when the bus turned out a dud. The puddle of oil under the engine was a give away and the bus barely made it round the block. 1 month of waiting for the guy to sort out the paper work all for nothing. I was starting to get despondent but we still had the option of a smaller school bus up in Struuisbaai to fall back on. We just had to wait for the guy to be available after new year before we could move on that. More time ho hum and I was starting to loose my pluck.

In the meantime I focused on Xmas, stuffed my face, tanned my cellulite and got horribly drunk on new years. Then we discovered that the Struuisbaai bus had a problem with the diff, wrong ratio and complicated to sort out. Mid January back at work and on the phone to dealers who could put a Nissan centre diff into an Isuzu engine in a Bedford bus. Not going well and we hadn’t even started on actual work yet. About to give up we considered buying a camper just to get going. Then we went back for a second looked at the very first camper bus we looked at in October, which at the time seemed crummy but suddenly seemed perfect. It’s smaller and lighter than a big bus yet bigger than a standard camper and it’s already kitted out. Just a few changes needed. It’s absolutely perfect. We will have to hook up a trailer for the bikes as apposed to hoisting then onto the back. No problem, in fact less work.

So now we are the very proud owners of a camper bus and are busy getting it ready for roadworthy. Yeehaa!