Pages

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Camping out

I really do enjoy camping, although I haven't done it for a while. As a young adult I hitched/camped/bussed/trained around Zimbabwe and Zambia with friends, I backpacked around Ireland and a little bit in the UK. I also have done my share of camping in the Drakensberg mountains and the Natal South Coast, and loved it all. However, for the last few years I have not camped out at all, and in some ways I miss it. However, the last few days I find myself in an different position. I returned home on Friday to find that the electricity was off. Thinking nothing of it we had a barbecue for supper and went to bed. Only to find that the electricity was still off Saturday morning. Apparently there was a problem with one of the substations and the electricity will be off until Thursday at the earliest! So, here I am camping at my own home, and needless to say I have decided I prefer the real version. Ok, I have my own bed to sleep in, but that is about the only advantage. At least at a camp site I have hot running water for a bath and to wash dishes. Ok, I have camped without but that was not by choice. A tent in the dark also is a lot lighter than a house in the dark, well our house anyway. All our cooking implements are electric and so we have been BBQing which is fine for lunch, but not so good for a cup of coffee! Tomorrow I will go and get some gas cylinders so we can at least heat water, and tonight I eventually resorted to showering at the gym, which I will do for the rest of the week. The other thing is unfortunately none of my computers are powered by gas (lol) and so I am cut off from the world, I am tring to conserve my cell-phone battery until I can charge it tomorrow at work. Thank goodness for work lol. (Words I never thought would come out of my mouth/fingers!) I cannot believe how dependent on electricity we have become, and how dependent on the internet I am. What am I doing without the internet, you ask? Well, actually studying, doing some reading, made a card and a half, played some cards and really just relaxed. Sounds idyllic, well it is until about 6pm! So, I will only be around on and off for a few days but hope to be back full time by the end of the week.
PS Power failures are a relatively common occurence around here, but not normally for this long.

4 comments:

  1. Gosh thats a long time to go without electricity, I hope they sort it out sooner than Thursday.

    ReplyDelete
  2. many years ago when I was a student in London the weather was so bad that our water supply froze so no running water for over a week - we ended up using the showers at the gym and going to the local pub for a drink at the end of the evening so that we could wash and clean our teeth. To begin with fun to cope but we were so glad when the water thawed. Good luck with the rest of your camping at home

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hope they've over-estimated the time and you'll have it back a lot quicker. We were once without for about 14 hours and that was bad enough. Thank heavens for barbeques. Thanks for stopping by my blog, glad you enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh I do hope they get it back on sooner than they are estimating...involuntary camping's not much fun!
    Alison xx

    ReplyDelete