October 2021

Day 2 of our Oorlogskloof Hiking Trail will follow shortly … but the second night on the trail definitely deserves to be a post on its own!

The night of horror!

We went to bed at around 21:00 and the moment we turned off the lights, we heard little footsteps … like in mouse footsteps! Switched our headlights on to check, but nothing. Lights off and ‘tippy-tippy-tippy’ it goes again. Lights back on, nothing.

This continued for about an hour, until Berto decided it must be a busy mouse (or mice) on the roof, because we can’t see them on the floor. But trying to sleep with all of this commotion was almost impossible. And, so it continued until almost 3:00 the next morning – we falling asleep for a couple of minutes and then wide awake again with our 4-legged ‘friend(s)’ running like mad!

Then it got quiet … or maybe we were just so tired that we did not hear anything further.

When our alarm went off at 6:00, we could hardly open our eyes … until we smelled something familiar (a nice smell, but not necessarily early in the morning) … WINE!

I took my 1l wine box out of my backpack last night (because that’s packed on top) and left it on the table … it was still full last night, but now it was almost empty! Wine on the table and on the floor … and a few small bite marks on the side of the box. Yes, the mouse (or mice) were in the house! And they had a royal time:

  • Drank my wine,
  • Ate half of the one packet of Game powder (energy drink), and
  • Stole one of my tea bags!

At first, we could not believe our eyes! Then thought how to rescue the last bit of wine, but alas, I was not sure what else (except for wine) was left over in the box, so I throw the last bit out. Like a friend said, you can always replace water (by sipping dew drops from leaves early in the morning), but how do you replace wine in the Wilderness?

Well, I’m not sure how the mouse and his friends feel this morning … but my backpack is suddenly 1kg lighter!

My (empty) box of wine – do you see the little eye? The bite marks are on the right of that …

Ok, that was quite a long story … but I just had to tell it! We had a good laugh and when the day got tough on the trail, Berto would just mention the word “mice” and I would start laughing again!

We will see you shortly on the trail for our 2nd day!

You can read about Day 2 here