Hello, civilization! I have recently returned into your clutches from a glorious four days of no reception or electricity. For some, that is a concept reserved for nightmares and the apocalypse but for me, it is a rather ideal holiday.
We ventured out to Beverlac,a lovely camping spot about 2.5 hours outside of Cape Town. Our choice in timing (it being the middle of the week and the middle of exams for most) meant that the campsite was pretty empty, apart from a few elderly folk and a couple who wanted to inform the surrounding campers that they were in a very happy and intimate relationship by having very loud... chats. The weather was in the 30s for the duration of our stay which meant our days started early so that we would miss the midday heat. We kicked off every day with a walk/hike. Our walk/hikes led us to the many beautiful rock pools that are spread around the area. We paid visits to "Flat Rock", "The Bum-Slider" and one called "The Secret Pool" which was very clearly indicated on the map so I assume "secret" was a word interpreted from another language using Google Translate. A swim in one of these pools after a hot and sweaty hike is guaranteed to be 1000x better than any swim you will ever have, particularly when it is after a hike where you end up bundu bashing through an overgrown path, lose the path, have flashes into a future where you have to decide who will be the first of the group to be eaten, find your only company in a volleyball named (scream in the voice of Tom Hanks) WILSON, come back to the present and stress a little bit before climbing up a random part of the mountain in order to find the path again. As you can imagine, submerging yourself into the cool waters of a rock pool after an ordeal like that is rather pleasant.
Upon arrival, we drove very slowly around the site numerous times in order to find the finest and shadiest spot. We had the entire campsite to choose from so we were intent on taking full advantage of that. At last, we found our picturesque little patch of grass which we would call home. It was protected from the sun by some leafy trees, one of which was also home to a little suburb of weavers. We thought this would be rather sweet but after one weaver got kicked out of his house, things became a bit noisy. I assume the weaver had been having an affair or something to that effect because that evening, he arrived home only to find that all the locks had been changed. He was rather upset at this turn of events and banged loudly on the door, demanding to be let back in. The family inside shouted at him for a bit before ignoring him all together. For two days this deranged weaver flapped his wings, puffed out his feathers and made as much noise as he possibly could but the weaver family inside remained strong, refusing to let him in. The neighbouring weavers watched this whole commotion from safety of their own little weaver homes. Mr and Mrs Featherbeak (of 2 Nesting Road) watched attentively from their window, they were always the first ones to hear and spread the local gossip. When the Tweetson family was renovating their nest, the Featherbeaks were the first to speculate as to where they got the money for that rather flashy entertainment room ("they seem like the type to have shares in some of the more questionable businesses") and question the qualifications of the architect ("is she really going to allow them to choose that layout for the ground floor?"). We were lucky enough to witness every moment of the biggest scandal to hit Beverlac and there was hardly a moment of the day when we were deprived of the drama. The cheating weaver would begin his begging and pleading at about 5/6am and continue throughout the day. By the evenings, he was completely drained and would retire to a motel for the night. At this point all the tiny bugs of the campsite felt it safe enough to come and swarm our site, they were very friendly but weren't very aware of personal boundaries so chose to be very close to us all the time. Frankly, it did get quite annoying. I found this with a lot of the insects of Beverlac. Look, I like friendly folk as much as the next person, but there is a line. The spiders thought it was okay to just share our tents without asking and lizards would sit right next to us at the rock pools, despite the entire area being completely empty. However, besides the one weaver, they were all very polite and generally did not disturb the peace.
Other than swimming, watching the weaver and asking the bugs to not sit on us, we played many a board game, siesta-ed, sat around a fire place, drank wine (we would invite the distressed weaver to join us, he could clearly use a drink. Although we by no means condoned his actions) and just enjoyed being outside and not close to anything that would try and make us get a loyalty card to get 30% off our next purchase.
A true mid-week delight.
Thanks for reading!
Comments