Camping at Palmiet & week 7 - day 2

We went camping at Palmiet this weekend. Palmiet is our fav camping spot for various reasons. We haven't been for a while so were really looking forward to it. Luckily, because we got there early on Friday, we got our fav camping spot too. We had recently bought a 2nd hand camping fridge and were using it for the first time. At first, we couldn't figure out how it worked on gas (there was no manual with it), but phoned my daughter to find out. We got it working but there was a strong smell of gas all the time, which really worried me, so before we went to bed on the friday night, we switched it off. Hubby discovered that part of the regulator was chipped and thats why gas was leaking out. When the shops opened on Saturday morning we had to go and get a new regulator - luckily we did find on and with that on, the fridge worked great.

(note our new camping cupboard next to our tent - it made things around camp much easier. We also used for the first time our new - but secondhand - camping fridge (behind the cupboard, so you can't see it). It works on gas as well as elec & car battery which is great, cause we don't camp on the sites with elec. You can also see, between the trailer and the camping cupboard, our washing station which my hubby very kindly made for us)

Talking about Friday night *SIGH*, there were some VERY  LOUD, & VERY NOISY people on the top level of the campsite. The TALKED LOUD, they LAUGHED LOUD and the SWORE LOUD. I couldn't sleep and the last time I looked at my watch it was about 2.30am and they were STILL at it GRRRRRRRRRR

 One of the first things we noticed when we went down to the beach on Saturday, is that the channel from the river to the sea wasn't there anymore!!!! The beach just continued to the other side leaving the lagoon/river mouth totally cut off. The nice thing about that, is that the water in the lagoon was lovely, so nice that I even swam a lot and normally I don't swim much at Palmiet cause the sea coming into the lagoon usually makes it very cold.

(My hubby in the lagoon, you can see in the background how badly burnt the mountain is from a recent fire there)



While I was swimming there was a very pretty, very tiny crab swimming in the water and I caught him for a while just to admire him :-)  Lots of lovely little fishies too. We saw a lot of birdlife and also the mongoose that we usually see at least once during our weekend camps. The bats at night are awesome too, although my son's girlfriend didn't think so cause she's scared of flying things.

(Luckily my son's girlfriend wasn't here when I took this. These gulls are BIG ones LOL)

It was a wonderful and relaxing weekend, well most of it anyway, here comes the not so relaxing part. One of my Shape Challenge running sessions was on the weekend. Walk 15mins briskly. 2 x (13min jog, 2 min walk). Walk 10mins briskly to finish. There is a nice boardwalk near the campsite, so I decided it might be nice to do my session on the boardwalk. I started off about 7.30am and went to the boardwalk. I soon discovered that for two reasons, the boardwalk wasn't suitable for my run. 1) It was rickety in places, and broken in places 2) The boardwalk was sporadic with places inbetween with sandy, rocky path. I was worried I could twist my ankle. So, as soon as I saw a part going back up to the road I took it, thinking it would be much better running on the road. All good and well, EXCEPT for the fact that it seems that EVERY road in Kleinmond has hills on them *SIGH*. I ran up hill and I ran down hills and no matter where I ran there were hills *PHEW*. However, I did get my session done, so I'm now one more day closer to completing the challenge.

Packing up again of course wasn't fun, but at least we had a nice bacon, egg, mushroom & fried tomato breakfast to fortify us for the task. On the ride home I actually fell asleep in the car I was so tired and then of course came the unpacking of the car and now over the next day or two, I have to wash and repack all the camping stuff again and wash all the dirty camp clothes - BUT ITS ALL WORTH IT!!!!!