Our First Week at St. Ancothesa

Last Saturday we left Stormsriver and drove on through Plettenberg Bay, Knysna and George to our next volunteering farm, St. Ancothesa. On the way, we drove over a few magnificent bridges including the highest bungee jumping bridge in the world, the Bloukrans river bridge. 

Bloukrans river bridge.

We stopped at Knysna and took pictures from a lookout point over the Two Heads.

Wilderness’ long white beach was briefly sighted....

On through George, we arrived at the farm and was warmly greeted by our hosts, Jan and Anel Burger, as well as their 3 year old son Jandiesel; a very nice and busy family. After introductions and a braai, we spent our first night in a house with lots of space ! The rest of the week, me, mom and the boys helped at the small local school with all sorts of administrative tasks as well as putting up posters and keeping the children busy. We also cleaned our house, worked in the garden, and sorted out our own school books.

The Kammanassie mountains. 

Our first lunch under the tree. 

Maarten and Diesel "swimming". 

Playing cricket. They play rugby too; it's so funny when they dive at each other, roll over the hard rocks etc. and disappear in a cloud of dust.

Swordfighting. 

Some of the older boys helped my mom fix a wendyhouse. 

A local farmer's son dropped by on his horse. 

Dad worked full days with Jan in the yellow peach orchards. The Export Quality peaches are hand picked by teams of workers (we enjoy hearing the Afrikaans dialect spoken here in the Cape). They also farm with cattle, sheep, and alfalfa.

There are 'top' pickers and 'bottom' pickers; the top ones have ladders. 

We are eating a lot of peaches.... There are 2 big bowls of rejects in our fridge already (the rejects usually only have a few bruises that you can cut out).

Our house is large and roomy, but what we like most about it (especially mom) is the magnificent view we have from our front porch.

A rainbow on the first evening (we didn't have rain though). 

Yesterday we found a small kitten in the tall grass at the school, mewing and hungry. I gave her some milk and she contentedly sat in a crate for the rest of the morning. They want to keep her for the school (they have mice), but no one wanted to look after her for the holidays. Kammanassie (Nassie for short) was then promptly adopted into the Krugers household for a month (I AM SO HAPPYYY).

Kitten!

She's a smart cat; she even smiled for the camera.

We also enjoyed the heat of summer (finally!), as opposed to the cold and cool weather we’ve had up till now! 

 Our first sunset.

The Klein Karoo under mist. 

Thanks for reading!