Preparing for Our Holiday

Yesterday we started packing the caravan for our holiday next week. We plan to leave very early Monday morning, and we should be there before midday. We’ll be heading down to the Southern Drakensberg, to a caravan resort called Silverstreams.
Our first visit to Silverstreams was in 1996. We had only two children at that time (Gee! That was long ago..) and they were both still in nappies. We didn’t have our own caravan at the time and were attracted to the resort’s advertisement of ‘Caravans for Hire’. My parents accompanied us, as well as my paternal grandmother, who has since passed away. We went down in September of that year, and that was our first mistake! The days were hot, but the nights were freezing! The caravans for hire turned out to be so old, they could have been left over from the Great Trek!! They were extremely basic, very ‘rustic’ and ours had a not-so-friendly permanent inhabitant – a mouse!!
We were booked in for a week, but only stayed for three nights. It was just SO cold at night, my grandmother took ill with Bronchitis, and the mouse got into our suitcase and ruined a few of our clothes. Malcolm got his revenge by shooting it with my father’s .38, and we went to Durban instead, while my folks took my grandmother home. The holiday had been such a disaster, but I had REALLY liked the area. The mountains were just so beautiful, and the whole place was so undisturbed. I told Malcolm that I’d come back one day when we had our own caravan!
I was another ten years before we realised THAT dream! Then in 2007 Malcolm got two weeks leave in December and we decided to go away. We usually take advantage of the fact that we are homeschoolers by going away out of season. I WILL NOT go to the coast at all in December! It’s just so busy (and expensive!) So we decided to go to Silverstreams again – this time with our own caravan – just as we’d said we would.
We had told the children (five of them now) that the place was very far from civilisation, not a commercial resort, but beautiful. I can’t say they were very excited by the idea. They thought they were going to be bored for a week in some remote place in the mountains. Imagine our surprise when we arrived there to find the place had been upgraded – no more rustic caravans for hire, they were all gone, and the place was full of families camping and caravanning. (No mice either!) Even better was the fact that most of the families there were English, and at least three other families were homeschoolers! The area was as beautiful as I remembered it – and still so unspoilt. We really enjoyed our stay – and went back in 2008! Many of the other families were there again – and it’s become our family’s favourite holiday resort! Many times during this year one or another of the children would sigh and say, “I wish we were at Silverstreams!!”
The resort is right on the border with Lesotho, and if you climb the mountain and walk along its top, you can say that you were in Lesotho! This year I plan to climb the lower part of the mountain by the resort! The kids did it with Malcolm in 2007. I had Keren as a toddler then, and was pregnant with Jordan last year, but this year I am doing it – with Jordan in the baby sling!

Here are some of last year's photos:

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