Day 11

A lovely sunny morning today! Still really cold! But at least it's a sunny cold.

As no-one arrived to take us down to Hopewell (the Kuzuko staff have been very busy lately and have other more pressing priorities) Max and I decided to start the hour long walk to the Barn ourselves while Ines and Kira waited in case someone turned up and sorted out dinner for that evening in the meantime.

It's a very pleasant walk down, especially in the sunshine, and there's always something interesting to see on the way. Sure enough, half way there, eagle-eyed Max spotted this cute little fellow among the rocks on the side of the road. We don't know what type of lizard he is, or even if it is indeed a he, but we're pretty sure he is in fact, a lizard.

Please ignore me, I'm dead, you see

His defence mechanism seemed to be keeping completely still as if dead, which if we happened to be owls, would mean he probably would be. But keeping so still at least meant we got a good shot of him.

A little further down the road we overturned a big rock and found this spider that was incradibly flat. Not knowing if he was dangerous or not - and it pays to be safe than sorry in these parts! - we kept a good distance from him. Later we were told he is probably what's known as a Flat Wallspider, and not dangerous at all. We like him not just because of that, but also because he eats mosquitos!

Someone doesn't like signs

We eventually got to the Barn, dumped our stuff, then took our usual walk down to the waterhole. On the way we heard a loud, strange grunting coming from the other side of the banking. We thought it might have been the wildebeast that we often see sweeping majestically, but as we reached the top of the bank we saw a large male baboon making all the noise. The grunting was very loud, and was occasionally answered by another grunting, probably female, baboon, though we couldn't see her at all.

We were only about 80 metres away, but he spotted us pretty quickly, and made his way, at a leisurely pace back into the bushes before we could get a good close up of him. We watched as he made his way up the bottom of the mountain, occasionally disappearing in and out of sight until we couldn't see him at all anymore. We could still hear him, and his friend, very clearly for the next 20 minutes or so. As much as we could've stayed there, watching other wildlife, including lots of vervet monkeys hopping about in the trees, there was work to be done, and a growing waterhole to be photographed.

Take your cameras off me, you damned filthy human!

We can still see the waterhole getting bigger, but the noticeable difference will be less and less as the surface area increases. Still looking good, though!

Ines and Kira arrived by Cruiser about 30 minutes later. After they left the house and started walking,  someone saw them on the way and kindly offered them a lift. They had brought some nice egg sandwiches with them too, so an early tea-break before getting on with more work.

I started sorting out the wood, metal and wire from the pile in front of the building, Max, the trooper that he is, got on with yet more cementing as per usual (though the end is in sight now!), and the girls began the fiddly and boring job of filling holes in the woodwork of the window frames.

One mucky pup

Max telling off Mum for wirebrushing his fresh cement

Tinny popped by to borrow some of his tools, and as I had some large metal bars buried in the ground to get rid of, and digging them up was taking forever, I asked if I could use the JCB to pull them out. Ultimately unsuccessful, as we had no decent chain to use to pull them out, but as far as fun was concerned, it was a great success! Mr Lizard, of Watertank House made another appearance, but didn't seem to approve of such a large dangerous machine quite so near to his house.

You're my digger noooow

We don't do Health & Safety

What you doing, eh?

As well as Mr Lizard, the lovely glossy starling also stopped by for a bit of discarded staff lunch pasta and mince. He enjoyed it a lot more than I did, I think.

In the afternoon, Joseph and Wellington came over to start preparing the big crack (hereafter known as The Big Crack) with the obstinate generator, and an iffy angle saw.

What crack?

Now we have the supplies, we're starting to make headway again, but it is all a much slower process than we had imagined or hoped. With all of us dog-tired by now, it was home again at the end of the day after a quick sweep of the floor and a tidy up. Now time for some food, rest and sleep...