My knucklehead’s bearded dragon, Spike, lives a royal life in this here house!

When the knucklehead goes into his room he calls to and talks to Spike like I do to my cats! Its too comical!

When he’s preparing Spike’s food in the morning and evening Spike sits on his shoulder and gets fed hibiscus flower petals whilst his veggies are being chopped!

When the knucklehead goes outside for a cigarette Spike goes too, and sits in the sun on a perch made of wood! He sits on the same perch when his terrarium is being cleaned out.

When the knucklehead is lying reading on his bed at night Spike has the run of the bed and walks along the edges before walking up the knucklehead’s leg to sit on the pillow under the reading lamp!

This whole 5am wake up call was exhausting, but I think I’m getting used to it. Like when I used to stay up till 2am reading blogs and talking strawbreez on Skype, and then get up for work at 5h30. You can get used to anything! And they do say smart people need less sleep…

You can stop sniggering now.

Ooh and don’t forget – you can read about my adventures with Volt here and on Twitter here -> #SAGApupVolt.

This weekend past I had a couple of cupcake orders to take care of (you know who my alter ego is right?), and then we spent the afternoon at a place called “Higher Ground”  to celebrate @SnowgooseSA’s birthday. When this venue boasts about having an awesome view of Jo’burg they’re not kidding! Its gawjiss! And the children exhausted themselves with all the open space to play!

And what a lovely afternoon! I got to see some good friends and meet some new people including one friend’s new fiancée and a few fans of The Cupcake Lady, which is always an awesome ego-boost!  There was also a famous rugby player there, whom I of course didn’t recognise, much to my Glugster’s consternation… But its cool, his rugby doesn’t clash with my F1… LOL!

Sunday was spent recovering – for the most part – from Saturday night, LOL.

Ooh and I got another invitation for a new Ford vehicle launch on the 23^rd, so keep your eyes open for that review! And I may or may not be contributing a little something to a printed publication for the first time in my life and I’m very excited about that!

And you can read all about it here.

I also tweet about it and you can see those Tweets by following the #SAGApupVolt hash-tag!

Does anyone remember when I mentioned I had won a prize from Ford?

In case it went unnoticed, when I went on the Ford Focus launch, they had a competition for the participants to describe a road trip weekend spanning 3 days and two nights, using only 100 words! The prize was worth R10K and a few weeks after the launch I was announced as the winner! I was super stoked! I then asked Ford very nicely if it would be possible to postpone the trip till October so we could go away for my Glugster’s birthday weekend, and to my delight they said yes!

Brace yourselves bunnies- this is a long-ass blog post, and long overdue!

Here was my original idea- for which I won the prize. Drive to Kaapschehoop on the Friday, do the walk to the escarpment and see the horses, stopping to see the sights along the drive from home. Day trip to the Kruger Park on the Saturday. Do a bit of a horsey out-ride in Kaapschehoop on Sunday morning before setting off home, stopping to see the Stone Circle ruins near Waterval Boven on the way.

I then started looking into where to stay and things to do, and quickly discovered that Kaapschehoop accomodation- where I had originally hoped to stay- gets booked up REALLY quickly and that it was too, erm… “affordable” to use up enough of the R10K prize money as it is mostly self-catering!

So instead I started looking at hotels in Nelspruit, as the main aim of the trip was to visit the Kruger Park. The knucklehead had never been, I had made one trip when I was about 9 years old, and my Glugs hadn’t been in many years. I found a few hotels that professed to be 5 star and we were eventually booked into the Sheppard Boutique hotel. A 5am Kruger Park game drive was booked for us for the Saturday morning, and I was told we had x-amount of cash for food, and x-amount for petrol that we could spend and claim back with the receipts as they couldn’t just give us the cash. This really put a damper on everything for me… my Glugs had only been working for 2 months after 3 months of unemployment- cash to blow on a weekend away was not in our budget. I was hoping we could get a hotel with dinner, bed and breakfast covered at least, but that was not to be, and we can’t look gift horses in the mouth now can we?! Then when I tried to make a booking for an out-ride in Kaapschehoop for the Sunday morning, I was told we were over the horse’s weight limit and they wouldn’t accept our booking. The Ford Focus we would be using was supposed to be delivered on the Thursday before we were due to leave, with a full tank. I was REALLY hoping we’d get one of the diesel sedans as they were a dream to drive and because diesel goes much further than petrol… but we got the Ford Focus Sport Hatch with a full tank of petrol, delivered to the house at around 11am on the Friday morning due to a mix-up with the organiser- which meant we left a lot later than we had planned to, and Nelspruit is a 3 hour drive at least.

I tell you what, I was this close to bailing on the whole thing as one “plan” after another fell through… but we really needed a bit of a break, and we had been looking forward to it for a while.

When I started planning the trip I had happy, fuzzy, sitcom-inspired visions of a little family get-away with the three of us enjoying each other’s company and touring the Kruger and playing Scrabble and such… But having the three of us together was immensely stressful, and it broke my heart to admit that I am exceptionally hesitant to do it again…

Anyhoodle.

When we got to the hotel on the Friday night and booked into our rooms, it wasn’t bad at all- and the knucklehead had his own room two doors down from Glugs and I- but it certainly wasn’t 5 star IMHO… we decided that their 5th star was self-proclaimed! LOL! Glugs and I then took ourselves off to get McDonalds for supper and opted for a relatively early night as we had the 5am game drive the next day.

We were awake with difficulty at 4am and managed to get a half a cup of coffee swallowed before leaving for Kruger’s Phabeni Gate. It was further than we’d thought and we were late – but when we got there the gates were still closed so not knowing any better, we joined the queue of cars and game drive vehicles outside. When we eventually got in when the gates opened at 5h30, I took our booking forms to the one little building and was told that we should have asked to be let in and that the game drive had departed! I was miffed that we’d missed out and I was miffed that their phones were out of order and I had tried phoning the 2 different numbers I could find some 20 times the previous evening and afternoon to get more information- but I didn’t lose my cool as we had been late anyway. We would now just see the reserve in our own car instead! Then after chatting amongst themselves for a minute, the one ranger said his guests hadn’t turned up (I suspect he’d been waiting for us) and that he could take us out. We made short work of locking the car and climbing onto the game drive vehicle and we set off by 6am! The game drive was magical! With just the three of us and the driver, he took his time pointing out things like hippo trails, elephant tracks, and hyena dung, and when he realised we were keen on birds too, he helped us see a lot more! We saw hippo, kudu, impala, zebra, fish eagles, crocodile, loads of elephants- and were quite stunned by how quiet they are- even with a herd of 30+ ellies right next to the road, there was nary the crack of a branch- and a leopard tortoise!! We also came across a herd of buffalo which was very cool indeed.

Our game drive lasted about three hours and then we headed back to the hotel- where they very kindly allowed our starving trio to partake of the buffet-style breakfast even though breakfast was technically over- and we ate like horses! Its amazing how hungry such an early morning makes you! Then we had a swim! Yes- I actually swam! In a pool! The water was cold but it was so very hot in Nelspruit it was a pleasure! A little later that afternoon we headed back to Phabeni Gate to see if we could find some lion, which we hadn’t seen that morning. Did you know that ID book bearing South Africans pay a lot less to get into Kruger than foreigners do!? I thought that was pretty cool.

There was a huge difference in viewing from the vantage-point of a game drive vehicle and from the Sport Hatch we were in, but we saw a good deal. A baby croc, rhino, waterbuck, hyena, elephant, and lots of birds. And all over the reserve we saw these football-sized spider’s nests! I so badly wanted to examine one up close to see all the little spiders… We didn’t get to see any lion or leopard unfortunately, but it was a great trip nonetheless, with some fabulous bird life to add to our list.

After the game reserve, we had supper at an Ocean Basket in Nelspruit and headed back to the hotel. We slept in a little on the Sunday morning and headed to the hotel diningroom to make the most of the buffet breakfast again, and then we headed for Kaapschehoop to see the horses! As soon as a car pulls up in the grassy parking area the horses come to see if anyone has a carrot or something for them- so if you ever head out that way take some with you! After the equine greeting party abandoned us to harass some new arrivals, we set off on the walk. Its quite a distance but easy-ish to do as there’s no real climbing- unless you’re my knucklehead who makes his own climbing trails!! We didn’t do the whole walk (you follow the painted footprints) as we got to a point where we could sit on some rocks and look over the escarpment with relative ease. And it is a breathtaking view. The knucklehead must have done three times the distance we did with the climbing and zig-zagging he did all around us! We very stupidly chose the hottest time of the day to do the walk, but we had water with us and we had hats and sunblock, and there was a lovely breeze blowing up there.

After our walk, we had a drink at Salvador Pub and headed for Waterval Boven. Unlike what I usually do, I didn’t research the Stone Circle ruins at all. We had seen the sign for the museum several times when driving past the turn off, and I assumed the ruins were at the museum, or at least a short walk away. Turned out they do arranged tours to the ruins as they won’t disclose the location, and the tour had taken place the day before.

FACEPALM!

I was a little fed up, but by that point the three of us had had quite enough of each other’s company so we were quite happy to continue to make our way homeward.

It was lots of driving, and lots of tension with a very few happy highlights thrown in, instead of one awesome family weekend… and lots of laughs…

Oy.

Check out my wannabe photographer blog for photos from our trip…

And I am blessed to have a darling husband who loves it as much as I do!

Our most recent excursion was courtesy of Southern Sun! I entered a competition on their Facebook page in December and on the morning of my birthday I was notified via Twitter that I was one of the winners of 2 tickets to…

…DRUMROLL PLEASE…

THE NUTCRACKER ON ICE at Montecasino’s Teatro!

When we were waiting for the show to start I Googled The Nutcracker story for my Glugs as he didn’t know it, and its a little easier to understand the performance if you know the tale. Tchaikovsky’s music is divine, and I love being able to follow the story when I watch a ballet. As is the rule in theatres, you’re not allowed to take any photographs inside the theatre during the show, and I so wish I could give you a glimpse of what we saw! It was FANTASTIC and we had such awesome seats!

our view of the stage!

I’m sure everyone has watched some figure skating at some point, so you can imagine the kind of moves they do on an ice rink being done on a theatre stage! It was awesome! And there was so much to see! What a show! It was even snowing on the stage! The costumes were so gorgeous – some of the dancers even had lights in their tutus!! I was literally gasping with delight!! Drosselmeyer flew off the stage and over our heads! The mouse king was spinning around with the mouse queen ON HIS HEAD – without even holding on to her!! Two skaters went up on rope swing thingamabobs! Drosselmeyer made a woman disappear!

It was wonderful. And it was over so very fast.

Thank you Southern Sun for a lovely evening’s entertainment!