Christmas 2017 and the year in a nutshell…………

Well we arrived back in Cape Town in the first week of December 2016, tired, sad but also excited about starting a new life in Kate’s lovely home. She too had had an extremely difficult year, travelling a lot for business reasons, losing her beloved cat, Max, and having burst water mains which resulted in serious flooding in the house. Somehow we felt that we were meant to return home share the stress of running a middle aged neglected house.

We had a lovely family Christmas with Steve and Kim, my sister and her family and the newest addition to the the family, a beautiful Siberian kitten, Star, to keep old Sam company.

The early part of 2017 was very messy - fairly extensive house repairs/renovations -
all of which were very successful and kept Rod too busy to mourn his Sheer Tenacity too much.

Then Kate was retrenched. South Africa’s downgrade to junk status caused an exit of foreign investors. So another reason for being very relieved to be home to share the the stress. She is now working for an incubator company that she was involved in years ago before she went into financial analysis.

Steve and Kim have also had a challenging year in Mozambique which has involved their being apart for much of the year. Never an easy situation. Steve gets back on Monday for a much needed spell of R & R with Kim and the dogs.

Its also been a year of trauma and ill health for many friends (I guess its our advancing years). We, thankfully, have been well apart from a few AF episodes and are keeping fit with a long daily walk on the golf course. Rod has started playing golf again and is doing his best to persuade me to pick up my ancient clubs and join him!

A real highlight of our year was a trip to the Timbavati. Friends of ours invited us to join their regular group for a week at Java Camp. We had a fantastic time which we really needed after at least 10 years of “no bush”. Our birding skills were a bit rusty but towards the end of our stay started returning. What made it even more tricky was the new names that were introduced during our long absence!!

We bought an elderly Landrover Discovery early this year. We decided to replace our ocean adventures with landbased ones. So October saw us heading for the Richtersveld for a week. We had an incredible time and Priscilla and Rod took the tricky rocky terrain in their strides.

2018 will have a few more adventures in store. The first being a trip to the Kgaligadi National Park, always a favourite of ours.

Rod has covered these two trips in detail with wonderful pics on his blogsite if anyone is interested in taking a look.

svsheertenacity.blogspot.com

So wishing you all a peaceful Christmas and a really good 2018

Much love and our very best wishes

Rod and Mary