Week 1

The weekend has passed quietly. The place is so isolated you don't really get to go out or meet a lot of people. There is little around, but that allows for quiet of mind. For someone like me, always busy filling every moment of the day with friends and awesome activities this is actually a blessing. 

I started reading again, drawing again, meditating more, hula hooping more. And I go for nice walks. Yesterday I followed the path that goes south of my apartment, climbing up on the hills, accompanied by Billy the dog. The view looked so:

It has something threatening, exciting and calming at the same time to be there semi-alone in the wilderness.  I do not know this nature or this area, I do not know all the do and the don't s. But I am willing to learn them and I have the time to.

On the reddish mud it is possible to read the passage of different animals. Monkeys, blue cranes, dogs and even a leopard. I suspect there is one living in this specific zone.

On Friday there has been another rain. The last 2 weeks it has rained more than the last two years in this area. Somehow every time I go to a supposedly arid area, it starts raining. 

In this area, strong rains translate in flash-floods. As the hills are stripped of their natural vegetation due to overgrazing, there is no roots, canopy, or leaves to slow down the course of the rain drops. The drops fall, collect and rumble down in a brown, nervous stream. I will upload a video, taken just aside O&M house, that really gives an idea.

http://lindacalciolari.reislogger.nl/video/flash-flood.33856

Anyway today it was dry again, the sun warm, almost too warm. I have been sitting in the patio, adjusting my thesis proposal accompanied by half the existing farm animals. It is nice, where i live there are pigs, chicken, sheep, dogs and 3 cats. The cats have taken the habit of sleeping on my bed. I lately wake up with all the three of them at my feet. 

Today the horse was particularly keen on my thesis proposal.

Now I should go to bed. Tomorrow I leave with Maya for a week. We are going to go to the Langkloof, Addo Elephant Park and Grahamstown. Mainly for project-related activities....but that does not exclude the chance to visit a bit more of this corner of South Africa.