It never rains, but it pours…

In this case literally. on Wednesday we got 100mm of rain in just over an hour! 

Luckily it was just rain, no winds or storm like we had before. Also all the repairs held up well and we had no leaks. So the Lodge came out of it unscathed.

And outside the Lodge wasn’t too bad.. the water was about 5cm deep and flowing fast, it did take lots of topsoil with it despite our efforts to encourage the grass. But still, without the grass that has grown it would have definitely been worse.

A bit further out from the Lodge it was worse, the water coming down to the spruit (dry riverbed) at the bottom of the property had come down hard! We had moved our entrance road a couple of weeks back as it went next to the spruit and was in danger of being washed away… that was a good move, as it had indeed been washed away. Unfortunately the alternative road also was partly washed away so there is work to be done for at least a temporary repair while brainstorming a permanent solution.

The only casualty of the rain was our trail cam. It is on a tree at the dam, and even when we had the hard rains a few weeks ago it was still at least 1.5m above the water… now however the dam was not only full but overflowing!

Water from all over the plot flows into the dam, so now the camera is about 1.5m under water. We went out as soon as we remembered but it was too late :(

Still we have tips about what to do when we can recover it, so we will see what happens.

In the meantime the spruit is now dry again, the dam is not overflowing any more, the bullfrogs are having a wonderful (and noisy) time and the reserve is looking green and beautiful. We have phone coverage again even though the power cuts continue… 2019 is definitely turning out to be an interesting year!