A cicada had woken us in the night, it sounded like it was actually in the studio, gosh they are loud. We woke at 8am & had bed tea & coffee & got up to have breakfast, at 9am the electricity went off & shortly after our host knocked to say it was load shedding & would be off for 2 hours. I got washed & dressed by the light from a candle whilst Richard went out for a walk.
We headed into Caledon approximately 30mins away to the thermal springs which were fantastic. The complex has 3 pools that use a hill & the drop between the pools to cool the water. We maybe did the pools in the wrong order as we actually started off in the flotation pool at the bottom, then went to the jacuzzi the bottom pool, which was approximately 34oc, then walked up the stairs to the middle pool, being approximately 38oc, & then the top & hottest at 42oc, we didn’t spend long in this pool - a bit too hot.
We then went back into the flotation pool, then went to the steam room & sauna, I didn’t go into the sauna & only spent about a minute in the steam room as I was feeling faint (damn hot flushes). We then went back to the flotation pool (our favourite, rather like a large warm bath) I spent a lot of time just floating in this pool - lovely.
We then went into the original Victorian pool section, I went back into the flotation pool & Richard headed to the steam room & Swiss shower (an outdoor rain forest shower). We spent a really enjoyable few hours at the springs. It didn’t open to the public until 12noon on a Monday & we arrived just before 11am but the lady on the reception desk kindly let us in early so we had the pools etc to ourselves for about an hour.
The thermal pools are now at a casino/ hotel complex so we had lunch in their cafe, Richard went for a wonder around the casino, mainly slot machines with 6 tables none of which were open.
We drove back to Greyton & had a cup of tea & then went for a walk around the town, lots of lovely houses & the mountain range in the background, I needed a couple of pages of my tax return printed & had seen a business centre so we called in there, I was trying to email it to the lady so she could print it for me when the power went off again & the phone service is also really patchy & I kept getting a no service & then just 1 bar, the lady said she’d print it 1st thing in the morning as the power was off for a couple of hours again.
Load shedding hadn’t happened for a while in Greyton so it was a bit unexpected & our hosts apologised that they hadn’t checked the schedule. Every place we’ve stayed had provided candles & matches in case of load shedding. On our walk Richard showed me the 3 bedroom house that was for sale, it has a nice open plan living, dining & kitchen & 2 bathrooms.
Luckily I had fully charged my iPad so I sat in the garden reading. We thought the power would be back on at 6pm & when it wasn’t by 6.20 Richard went out to get some wine, we weren’t sure what we’d do for dinner if the power didn’t come back on as we had planned to eat out, luckily it came back on & we headed out for dinner at Roberto’s bistro, which appeared to be the only place open on a Monday night. We had a lovely local Greyton Chenin Blanc that was wooded by Andy Mitchell & a nice meal, I had roast pork belly with cracklings & Richard had Navarin of lamb.