pony camp continued...

Monday

So, I said I would up date you all on what happened yesterday. Well, first of all I took Stephan and Kasey out on a little ride to build up their confidence. I took Kasey in the ring first and got her to practice walking and controlling the horse. She was riding Duncan and man he was being na ughty for her. Horses know when there is an inexperienced rider on their backs, and boy do they play up to it! He was being very naughty and lazy, but as soon as I got on him he behaved! In the words of one of our kids, Liesbeth, “naughty pony!”. Anyway, after the ring work we headed out on our little ride round the forest. Marley went with Edith and Ali because she has a lot more confidence on horse back. But I was very proud of my two, they trotted and everything without any screams haha.

After, we decided to take the dogs out and stopped off at the big dam on the mountain where we swam with the dogs, it was so much fun! I jumped in so many times, swam to the bottom and did handstands in the water. It was like being a kid again, messing around in the water. And the dogs loved it, they were having a whale of a time! When we had swam all we could, we came back and we set up the tents for our evenings camping. I am so proud of my awesome tent making ability! I have found my calling in life, and it is setting up tents! I didnt need any help and I didnt need to call Ali for any help muhahaha. I may suck at DIY and painting, but I knew there was a master outdoorsman inside of me ! After I made lunches for everyone ready for our hike up to the top of the mountain overshadowing the Lydenrust Farm. We headed up and unfortunately Marleys knee started hurting so Marley and Kasey headed back after our little lunch by the graveyard and me, Edith, and Stephan headed up. Man it was hard! The climb up there at the end is a killer on the legs! Stephan wanted to turn back a lot but Edith and I started singing “I like to move it, move it” from Madagascar at the top of our lungs until he either a. got motivated, or b. was so disturbed by our voices that he decided to keep going! Haha, probably the latter....

But boy, it was worth it! The view from the top was incredible! And the best is yet to come! When we reached the top, Edith looked down and was all shocked, I came over to see what she was talking about and she had found an injured Rock Kestrel! It was so beautiful! There was definitely something wrong and so I decided to catch it, which I did, with great success and we discovered it had an injured wing and could not fly. So, we headed down the mountain and showed Ali. We took him to a falconer near by and we found out that a vet would cost R8,2OO to try and fix the wing and that in most cases, the bird wont survive. So we got advice about what the bird eats and we took him back to the farm and put him into the aviary, where he still is now. I have been feeding him ever since on raw chicken. He has really gotten into it and he is such a beautiful bird. I wistle to him when I feed him and he doesnt nip my fingers at all, he just takes the meat! I feel like I am in the world of Harry potter, and this is now my letter carrier, like Hedwig haha, I am so cool!

In the evening we had a lekker braii at Brumby House with chicken and sausage while playing Battleship, Mastermind, and pool. It was so friggen cool, except when it came to start camping and it began chucking it down with rain....and suddenly no one wanted to camp any more! I was all for staying and toughing it but the rain got even worse and eventually even Stephan and I gave in and trudged back to the house. I have to admit, a warm comfy bed with dry pillows was a lot more appealing than a half flooded tent..... And thus the end of Monday arrived. I slept like an absolute log, as soon as my head touched the pillow I was out for the count!

Tuesday

I was out for the count last night, but ohhhhh I did not want to get out of bed this morning! Although, I was surprisingly full of energy after my coffee. The weather was terrible, and has remained so ALL day! It is like God wants us to have a bad pony camp because the weather clears up and goes back to sunny on Friday.....when pony camp ends! Grggggrrrrr! But it didnt stop us from heading out on a ride this morning. Just for a little walk, but still, we got out there regardless! After, Ali said that because of the weather we were going to have a road trip, to try and drive out of this bad weather and go somewhere nice. So we packed our lunches and headed out to the house that looked like a shoe, and the echo caves! It was such a nice day, it really was. We drove and drove and eventually came to our first pit stop where we had an ice cream and visited this awesome shop which sold wood furniture, which sounds boring but the stuff was so incredible! They had this table that takes a whole year to make out of one piece of wood. But it cost R12O,OOO which is around £8,OOO in English money! That is absolutely insane, especially if you could see where this shop was! It is in this little town, populated by poor farmers who earn R1,OOO a month, and the town constitutes of a garage, a police station, and a very pretentious furniture shop. Although, I have said that if I win the lottery that I will buy Ali the table haha.

After we headed to the Shoe, which was cool but it was a bit weird, and slightly creepy as it was filled full with old dolls which always creep me out....and oddly, even though the place was very religious with pictures of Jesus everywhere, it had a very graphic naked sculpture of a naked woman in the bedroom, which was just a little bit strange! Needless to say we didnt stay for long, but it was fun.

After, we went to the Echo caves which were soooo cool! They were used as a hide out by these tribespeople to hide from the Swazis and we were shown all the graveyards, kitchens and bedrooms, and the alarm section. If you hit the rock with a hammer, the sound travels for miles.

And this evening we are having another pool tournament and the kids want to try camping again but we will see how that goes......because the rain is getting even harder! I am so tired now so I will update you all tomorrow, Lekker Slaap everyone xxxxxx