Small town of Hazyview

  Hazyview, South Africa
Saturday, December 24, 2005

Hello again everyone.

We had a nice drive from Pretoria to a much more scenic part of the Mpumalanga province. The small town of Hazyview was where we were headed. The 100km area surrounding the town is where over half of South Africa's bananas are grown. It also has a large amount of farms for avacados, mangoes and macadamia nuts. It was a much cooler temperature when we arrived. Infact when we called home to Vancouver Island it was the same temperature! It was a case of two extremes, apparently a bit of a pineapple express was happening at home, and unusually low temperatures were being experienced where we were in South Africa.

We arrived during a huge thunder and lightening storm. The power was out when we got to our bed and breakfast. We treated ourselves for Christmas to a very luxurious place. The rooms are in their own detached round buildings called rondevals. It was about 600sq feet in size and had a ceiling that went up to at least 25 feet. We had a nice jacuzzi tub in the room and it all overlooked a man made pond. It was loaded with frogs, they were almost deafening at night. There were many differnet species, all making very strange noises. I think there were 6 rondavels all together on the property. The B&B was on a huge mango farm. They were in the process of switching over to macedamia nuts. The nuts are much more sustainable and profitable. The main house had a common room with t.v. and an outside porch for breakfast. The grounds were beautifully manicured and had a pool and sauna.





We went into the small village area to see what we could do for Christmas Eve. Luckily the power was still on at the pub style restaurant. We had a dinner out on the patio and then went inside for some drinks and to avoid the mosquitos. We sat up at the bar and chatted with a nice couple who had been living in the area for 5 years. They had retired in England and came to South Africa realizing their pension dollars could stretch twice as far here. Plus they got to live in a beautiful place.

Christmas morning and day were kind of like any other day. We opened a few small gifts we bought for each other, when I say small, I mean small, lol! What to heck are we going to buy each other? The exchanged gifts were, one of those scrunchie things to use to wash yourself with the liquid body soap, some shaving cream, bubble bath to use in the tub we had for the next 3 days, and a tshirt. The gift opening was all interrupted by the cleaning lady coming to make up our room.

The next 3 days spent there were interesting as our unit was never fully restored to have full functioning power. It would not stay on, the breaker kept kicking off. It would last anywhere from 5 minutes to sometimes an hour if we were lucky. It kind of ruined the enjoyment staying there, but what can you do?

Christmas day was one of the many hazy, and fully fogged in days we had. There were many scenic sights to see around the area, but we would have to wait to be able to view them. We drove to a place called Pilgrims Rest. It looked like a small village placed in the Swiss Alps. It was a neat place to walk around, but a definate tourist trap. In the evening we had a great buffet dinner at a golf course. It wasn't a typical Christmas dinner, but Jack got some of his favorites so he was delighted. Yorkshire puddings and gravy, as well as a christmas pudding. It was quite commical to see warning signs on the golf course that read as follows... Watch for flying golf balls and beware of Hippos and Crocodiles, they are not joking! How would you like to play a game of golf here???? I don't think I could relax, lol!



Got to put in this private joke for ourselves, "You must ride the quads" said just like Arnold. People are quad bike crazy here. Infact how strange is this, you can buy them right in the grocery store! If anyone doesn't know what a quad bike is, they are like the 3 wheeled ATV motorbikes, but have 4 wheels.

One of the best parts of travel is seeing strange stuff in other countries. Like weird toilets and toilet paper! Be sure to read the slogan in the upside down heart on the toilet paper.



Next stop another small town called Graskop, pancake capital! See you there.