Snek

A long, hot day starting with gym and ending in the drive back to Cape Town.

Somewhere in between those things, this:

A mole snake (Pseudaspis cana) chilling with its head deep in a mole hole in the dunes at Suiderstrand.

It was very accommodating for close up photos, perhaps mainly because its head was deep in a mole hole in the dunes at Suiderstrand.

Super chilled.

But it was also rather warm to the touch, perhaps because it was lying (mostly) in the midday sun.

Anyway, a lovely sighting on our beach wander.

Day 184 – Tropical

I’m about to braai some meat, but the clouds are currently dumping all the water on Suiderstrand and so I’m hiding inside for a while first.

With the wind coming straight off the Atlantic, it’s very easy to see when the next precipitation is on the way and consequently, very easy to avoid getting wet.

No such worries earlier when my daughter grabbed the camera and took this image of her mum in front of a tropical lagoon:

You wouldn’t recognise it now. My wife wouldn’t be out there now. In fact, she isn’t – she’s just over there also sitting in the warmth, enjoying an alcoholic beverage.

The rain has stopped. I’m going to braai. Have a nice evening.

Day 132 – Yeah, so…

…about that weekend away.

Partly because we needed to get down there and check everything was OK. Party because “intra-provincial travel for leisure” was allowed again. Partly because we just needed escape from Cape Town. And yes, partly because there was a family birthday.

We couldn’t really have wished for a better weekend. The weather was incredible, prompting walks along the shore, photography and late night braais. Not bad for the middle of winter. And the fact that our place was built to withstand the worst that the South Atlantic could fling at it meant that it had done exactly that: it was all in good, ship-shape condition. In turn, that meant that we had plenty more time than we thought to just relax and chill out.

We used it wisely.

Even as the weather closed in on Monday evening, we stayed out and about until the very last minute, grabbing every last bit of sunlight:

And even when the weather was scary, stormy and windy the next morning, I still managed to get out and get a PB for 10km, despite being off road and on shore for much of the distance. Chuffed. (Spoiler: the World Record is still very much intact and in absolutely no danger from me. I are not fast.)

More photos (you may have seen a few of them over the previous few days on here) are now up on Flickr. Some decent stuff in there, though I say it myself – remind me to tell you about my epiphany at some point.

The Suiderstrand Fire

Around lunchtime on December the 22nd, a veldfire ignited near the parking lot in Suiderstrand. With the southeaster blowing hard, the fire quickly spread and within half an hour, one building was completely destroyed. If it weren’t for the quick reactions of the Working On Fire helicopter from Bredasdorp, it could have been a lot, lot worse.

We weren’t down here then, as we were spending Christmas with family in Cape Town, and it took a while before the panicky messages on the whatsapp groups – in Afrikaans, nogal – began to make sense and I finally worked out that our place was not in immediate danger. It was a horrible few minutes. The point of ignition was only 100m from our front door, and had the fire started 24 hours before, it would have been blown directly towards our place.

The wind has been pumping since we arrived down here, and it was only yesterday morning that I managed to get the drone up to survey the scene from above and see just how lucky some houses were to escape serious harm.

There are plenty of melted gutters and lots of damaged paintwork, but nothing that can’t be repaired after the festive break. Not so much for the burnt-out home though. It’s a sad and sobering sight.

If one is looking for positives – and at this time of year, one should always have a glass half full – it was that this was the only casualty, and that no-one was injured or killed in the fire.

The village reacted well, with plenty of people on hand to assist where possible and great communication. And we’ve all renewed our knowledge of evacuation procedures and emergency numbers, which is never a bad thing.

We just hope we never have to use them.