What happened?

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OK. Let me quickly fill you in a few details.

We abandoned Agulhas on Friday afternoon. There was no power, no internet, and little hope of either being restored anytime soon. We were lucky enough to have somewhere to go (home), the roads were open, and so we took the chance.

There was a lot of fire damage on the road back up to Bredasdorp, and the situation was too risky to pull over and take photos like we had done on the way down. But here’s an image from the car window of the same place that we got the second shot in this post.

So we’ve been home since about 7:30 pm on Friday evening, and the electricity was only restored to Agulhas at 6pm this evening: an outage of about 74 hours. That makes even loadshedding look like a minor inconvenience.

The fire is now contained:

Which is obviously great news for those who have had no power for three days, and for those whose property was threatened by the actual flames, rather than the lack of utilities.

As for us: a disappointing end to a few days away, but we’ll be back – hopefully for a less eventful visit – sometime soon.

Just in case

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No power. No internet.

As I write this, at least.

I’ll pop this here just in case.

And then add to it if I can.

UPDATE

Hello everyone.

Just to let you know that we’re back in Cape Town: lucky enough to have somewhere else to go, given that the power is still off down South, and will be for probably another 24 hours.

That will be about 72 hours in all, and fridges, freezers, geysers etc just don’t work with no electricity.

Our neighbours’ damn pool pump? Sadly yes, because they have solar. So that was a nice, constant annoyance.

But I digress, often.

The repairs have been started, the fire is still burning, the residents are surprisingly understanding about the whole thing.

And I have 500 photos to go through.

But right now: braai time.

Fire issue

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We drove down to the cottage yesterday afternoon, for a few days R&R.

Before we set off, I did note that there was a bit of a fire just south of Bredasdorp, but we weren’t quite aware of what was coming.

Even from Caledon, we could see the fire burning about 60km away.

And the scenes in Bredasdorp were even more dramatic – but I can’t show you yet (see below) – before we drive within a few hundred metres of the blaze:

The problem is this. The internet cables through to (6000 miles from) civilisation run along this road, and they’ve been damaged.

So we’re running very low on bandwidth, and that’s why I’m writing this post last night (if you’re reading it today), just in case the damage gets worse.

Incidentally, the fire has now closed the road back to Cape Town as well, so I’m guessing that the power lines to us – which run along the side of that road – are in danger too.

Never a dull moment.

But maybe some dark ones.

If anything, the pain is getting worse

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A surprise double header for our 5-a-side team on Tuesday night. We literally found out about the second game just as we were heading onto the pitch for the first game. And while we love playing football, a double header is never great when you are a) old and… well… that’s about it, really.

We are the oldest team in the league by some distance. Some of the guys we play against weren’t even born when our team was founded, and I’d wager that I was older than each of the opposition’s dads in our second game.

But we played well. The first game was a really tight affair. It finished 7-8, and we were incredibly unlucky not to get something out of it.

Something other than getting completely knackered, that is.

I had a family thing I needed to get to. The Chilean had a restaurant to go and manage. At least several of our players would like to have gone and drunk some beer.

But no.

It was straight onto the other court and straight back into battle.

Dead on our feet, we somehow, bewilderingly managed to get to 3-0 up at half time. But then, playing into the blinding sun and the (actually rather pleasant) breeze, their comeback came back. Before too long, it was 3-3 and the momentum was only heading one way.

Courage, belief, attitude and an unwillingness to concede again kicked in. It was all automatic: there was absolutely nothing left in our respective tanks. But we threw ourselves in front of every shot, dragged every last ounce of energy to block a run; we left everything out there.

And we got a goal just before the end.

4-3, and our first win since September (it’s complicated, ok?). And it could not be sweeter. We struggled off the pitch to a cold beer. We staggered off to our respective destinations. And then yesterday morning, we reminisced on just how good it felt to win, and just how completely broken we all were when we woke up.

Imagine my dismay then, when I awoke this morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and then tried to get out of bed. Oh my deity.

If anything, the pain is getting worse.

I’m suddenly dreading tomorrow.