We’d planned to shop in Komatipoort today since it’s almost been two weeks since we last grocery shopped, but the rain and possibly flooded roads prompted us to stay home. We have plenty of food to get us through the weekend if we don’t feel like going until next week.
We always dine at Jabula on Friday and Saturday nights. This morning I prepared a new recipe that should last for two evenings, tonight and Thursday. The next time I will cook again will be on Sunday, with plenty of meat left in the chest freezer and plenty of ingredients for salad and sides. There’s no rush.
Our next pressing issue is getting our 10-year passports renewed, which it appears we’ll be able to do while we’re in South Africa. his morning, we drove to the US Embassy in Pretoria to apply for our passports. e could mail in our passports, but as mentioned in a past post, we don’t want to take the chance of being without our passports in hand while the new passports are being processed.
We will try and coordinate the trip to Pretoria when we have to drive to Nelspruit to pick up our visa extensions when those come through. That way, we’ll be a third of the way to Pretoria by the time we get to Nelspruit. Hopefully, the timing on all of this works out well. Pretoria is a five-hour drive from Marloth Park.
Once we arrive in Pretoria, we’ll have to stay overnight to avoid driving on the N4 in the dark. We’ll be able to accumulate more points for staying in a hotel for our Hotels.com account. Plus, we have thousands of reward points we can use on our other credit cards, leaving us with several options.
Over the past few days, we’ve been busy with several projects while the work on the house has been wrapping up. It appears all the electrical work is completed, and now we can sit back and relax, knowing that we are immune from load shedding. The only way we noticed load shedding is occurring is when the WiFi goes off for about five to ten minutes when the power is restored.
Most of the time, we have to wait patiently until the WiFi returns. Of course, this isn’t an issue late at night, but it certainly is noticeable during the day when we’re working online. It’s a minimal inconvenience. When the load shedding starts; we notice a little “beep” that has no impact on our power usage.
Of course, we’re mindful not to use the oven during load shedding periods. If we plan to use the oven for baking, we must check the schedule at the Eskom app on our phones to ensure it won’t drain the system since the oven requires so much power when in use, although the gas stovetop does not.
Also, we aren’t running the aircon at times when we’re using other appliances, which also drains the inverter system to a substantial degree. However, we only run the aircon at night when we’re in bed when no other appliances are in use. It’s working out perfectly, and we’re enjoying the sense of being relatively load-shedding-free. It’s almost as fantastic as having an elaborate solar power system.
We’ve been busy taking photos of events in the garden, and now that we’re finished with our most recent Kruger National Park photos, we’ll be posting some new and exciting photos tomorrow. We’ll be back tomorrow with more.
Be well.
Photo from one year ago today, February 8, 2022:
