You know how to start a fire, right?

Since Beth's and my next set of tickets is for Rustenburg, which is about 1.5 hours northwest of Joberg, we are spending a few days in the Magaliesberg mountain area (known as the Magalies Meander).  This area is used as a weekend escape by Joberg and Pretoria residents since it has some pretty hills, country charm, and a large dammed lake known as the Pretoria Riviera area. 

Hotels were few and far between in Rustenburg itself, so we're only staying there the night of the match.  Instead, we opted for the Saamrus Guest Farm just outside the town of Magaliesburg.  After a somewhat harrowing drive to the farm itself (Safricans do not like to light their roads nor do they like paved shoulders; they do however really like driving very fast on curvy roads, tailgating, and walking alongside the road in the dark), we took a very, very bumpy 2km road down to the farm.  This road was on par with some of the ones on our safari, and had us wishing we had a Landrover insead of our low-riding BMW. 

We finally arrived at the farm, where our hostess greets us by telling us she thought we were no longer coming (she had many cancellations due to England not winning their pool and therefore not playing in Rustenburg).  Our cottage was up a 400m steep, rocky hill that our BMW couldn't make it up, and her husband was too sick to drive us up in their SUV.  She then asked us if we knew how to light a fire, as our only source of heat would be a fireplace in the cabin.  Warning signs are flashing in my head at this point - trouble ahead!  She grabs a couple of her staff, finds us a flashlight ("torch" in local parlance), and sends us up the hill.  About 5 minutes of huffing and puffing later, we finally reach our cabin.  Beth & I only had our day bags/backpacks, and we felt like we couldn't catch our breath.  The nice staffers seemed to handle the walk with our large suitcases much better than we did.   They've clearly done this once or twice.

Luckily, our place was warm enough not to need a fire to heat it (absorbed a lot of heat during the day), and even more luckily, the cabin was very nice and charming.  Otherwise, I was going to cancel our 2nd night and head up to Rustenburg early to avoid the horrible road/uphill climb.  We had hot water bottles that kept us toasty warm at night, and only this morning were we chilled a bit.  I would have started a fire, but only discovered the matches outside on the patio after we were already up and dressed.  Alas.  Tomorrow morning, I've got the fire already laid and ready to go (and matches inside). 

(A side note about Safrican winters: apparently people here don't really believe it gets cold in the winter, even thought it's gotten down to between 0-5 degrees celcius (32-40 degrees fahrenheit) almost every night.  They did have a freakish cold spell last week before we headed up to Kruger, where they nearly matched their record low (negative 4 was the record, and we were negative 3), but even now, it's chilly every night.  And no one has heat.  Or heaters.  Most of our guest houses have offered us heaters, or rarely, AirCon with a heat setting, with the caveat "if you need heat, here it is."  Of course I need heat - it's 0 degrees outside!  Safricans are tougher than us Chicagoans, that's for sure.  We've spent a few very chilly nights when our heater hasn't been sufficient or worked at all.)