Gees, I never knew quite just how much adventure could be squeezed into one day... until yesterday! The day started propitiously enough, with a beautiful sunrise and 'min wind' so the girls and I enjoyed a picnic breakfast outside in the garden, soaking in our stunning view of the valley and its surrounds.
Shortly after settling on the picnic rug we could see that a small plume of smoke from Paarl mountain was fast becoming a rather larger cloud that was rising and curling around into our valley. The sun became a deep red and the smell of burning begn to fill the air. So I was quite relieved to find that, when I drove into Paarl towards the fire, the town seemed to lie upwind of the fire and the girls' playschool was enjoying cleaner air than we had at the farm...
...however, by the afternoon, the fire had spread right across the back of the mountain and some of the major wine farms, such as Fairview and Seidelberg, started to sweat. Just before it engulfed the vineyards to the south, the wind changed direction and funnelled the fire and its smoke back towards Paarl, whose residents were now beginning to feel the heat at 46°.
In the meantime, fires the other side of our mountain had also prompted another kind of resident to make a move... a young cape cobra had wandered into a friend's house (to find some cool and fresh air no doubt) and yours truly was called upon to catch it and 'redeploy' it far away. Having donned my wellies and grabbed my snake hooks, I drove as fast as allowed and got to the house only to be greeted by such a huge audience that I was more nervous of them than I was of the snake! Being my first 'hook n tail' since doing my course a few months back, I was little cautious and slow but I hope the little fella wasn't too traumatised and appreciated being shown his way back to the bush with an inflight newspaper for the duration of his short journey ; )
Once the little 'hiss pot' was taken care off, I got another call from a friend who needed help in another way - evacuating their house! The fire in Paarl had now dropped down to their road and they were engulfed in smoke. So it was back in the 'Batmobile' once again (ha - I wish) and I raced off for rescue mission no.2 of the day. Once through the police block I opened my car door expected some hastily-packed boxes to be thrown in the boot but no - I drove away with one 3 year old and one 3 month old baby...! Thankfully the mum followed later in the evening but it was quite a bizarre experience being thrown back into 'young parenting' mode with a newborn but no milk on tap! You'll be glad to hear that after just one night camping at our place, our evacuee family could return to their home which was still standing after the long day's blaze... albeit under a foot of ash. Sadly the poor firefighters and waterbombers were still hard at work (see photo)
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