PS: It was my birthday for a whole weekend!

- about an age and a country away, but I did say I would write more. Well, as we have no space in the car for all the birthday presents I might have got, this year my treat was going to be of the non-physical variety. For weeks I had noticed Stuart and Merryl whispering and suddenly shutting up, and whenever we did any trip planning there was a gap around my birthday where they couldn’t tell me where we were going to go. Then Merryl mentioned that she would be going rafting on my birthday weekend and a little later we were heading for Kampala, but I still had no idea of the size of the surprise until we drove around Kampala on the day before my birthday after Merryl had left, trying to follow the GPS without giving away the destination. We were going somewhere in town, but the GPS kept sending us down closed-off roads. Eventually we did end up where we were going, the Kampala Serena Hotel, poshest of the posh in that part of the World. A whole weekend in a real house with real rooms and real windows! Not only that, but there would be running water, straight into a nice bath tub, with white towels, and a toilet that flushed, and a shower with water pressure (my big obsession), and a sink with a mirror and everything! The water might even be hot, if I wanted it...

And that was just the beginning. There was a huge bed with white sheets and the mattress was most un-lumpy, and there were lots of plump pillows, and little bed side tables, and lamps I could switch off from the bed without getting up, and in the evening someone came to turn the bed down.The room had air con and a mini bar and a balcony and a soft chair, and a TV with lots of channels, none of which were silent or fuzzy. To crown the luxury there was wifi with a decent speed and no cut-outs (which is more than can be said for the other 5 star hotel we tried recently, where high-speed internet translated to 192kbps). Too much!!!

A whole weekend with this luxe lifestyle made me quite crazy, I didn’t know how to spoil myself first. Should I have a bath (of course) or a snooze on the bed? What could I download while I was here? Should I watch some TV? Or order room service. It was quite stressful, I tell you, and on top of all that Stuart and Merryl had arranged for me to have a massage and a manicure in the spa. As it turned out that was the best thing that could have happened, as I was totally relaxed after that.

Birthday treats

I have to write an extensive post on the fabulousness of the Kampala Serena Hotel, a weekend here being my birthday treat, but just to get you going, here is the cake the hotel came up with. I love this place! And the water pressure, well it's amazing...

Watching wild animals

For the last couple of years my birthday has been sadly neglected, but this year I followed Stuart to South Africa and he decided to treat me to a special trip: a weekend in a fancy game lodge looking at elephants and lions. As it turned out there were loads more animals to see than we expected, more on that later. From the private deck with views across the valley to the mosquito-netted bed to the massive bathtub decorated with flowers and candles, the lodge was out of this world. It’s a small place, only five huts grouped around a communal space where all the eating and meeting takes place, although it also has a pool and a little remote deck where you can watch the waterhole and see if anything comes to drink. The people wo run the place were incredibly friendly and helpful, arranging a private dinner for us on the first night inclusive of a massive pink birthday cake that we couldn’t do justice to, and a bottle of champagne. We got up every morning early (easily done when one is jet-lagged) to be taken on a game drive. The lodge owns an over-sized Landcruiser customised to allow everyone to see and stay out of the sun. There was much ribbing when the driver found out that we are Landrover fans, unfortunately the Landcruiser never got stuck so we had no opportunity to gloat. We also went out in the evening a few times, to watch the sunset on the veld (what they call the bush here). We saw an amazing range of animals, more than we thought possible: elephants, white rhino mothers and their calves, a lion, a leopard and a cheetah, giraffes, warthogs, wildebeest, various kinds of antelope (one of them dead, having been killed by the cheetah), zebras, baboons, and hippos (although of latter we mostly saw their ears, as they stay underwater to keep cool during the day). It was just incredible to see all these creatures so casually living their existence right next to us, mostly ignoring us as we pointed our binoculars at them. The giraffe was more concerned with keeping an eye on the cheetah stalking it, and the zebra with feeding its foal to be bothered by us. More photos on my flickrstream:

www.flickr.com

Before and after

My birthday was quite the success: I managed to scored lots of DVDs as well as some balloons and chocolates. Oh, and then there was the trip to the game lodge. More on that later.