To all of our old guests who returned to Blanco this year, it was wonderful to have you with us yet again. With each year that passes by, we look forward to your visit more and more. To all the new faces we met, thank you for supporting us and we hope your stay was everything you wished it to be. We look forward to seeing you again in the future.

Our in-season weeks went of as usual with plenty of fun to be had by all. One week worth mentioning however is our very well behaved April crowd. I was sitting in the bar one night having a quiet sherry and I innocently made the mistake of mentioning that they were by far the quietest group of guests that we have! Well, the following night I found myself dragged to the bar in my pajamas only to witness a striptease on the bar, some very fancy dancing, some decidedly interesting dress sense and some serious alcohol consumption. All credit to this will have to go to the one and only – Dave Granger!

Here are some photies of our “well behaved week”:

If anybody thought Hillary Goldberg was quiet and well behaved, think again. As for Jenny Scott, how you can have a husband that wears undies like yours we have no idea! In your favour though Nev, at least you kept us all thoroughly entertained.

September and December/January guests, we are looking most forward to seeing you all again.

Now, on to the finer points of Blanco;

We have opened a little farm shop, which was extremely well supported in July. Currently we have stocked the shop with local made products and our own range of Blanco branded merchandise. We would greatly appreciate any suggestions as to the type of merchandise that you would like to see in our shop. Kitty Phillip’s shop, “The Prickly Pear” has unfortunately closed down. She has sold her Port Alfred Franchise so could not continue to trade here.

The weatherman has also been very good to us this year and with the recent floods that the Eastern Cape had, our dams have been completely filled. We had a week of torrid rain and the entire valley flooded. I have posted some photographs on the site to show everyone what the dams, roads and streams looked like. We were completely “rained in” and some of our guests where “rained out”. On the morning of the “big flood”, Chris and I went to look at the dams and both the bottom ones were still completely empty. We drove the truck through the middle dam and Chris suggested that we take a photograph of us with the truck in the middle of the dam. He said he was sure that it was going to fill up. I just laughed at him and failed to take the photograph. Silly me because by that afternoon, the dams were all completely flooded. In the photographs, you will see an overflowing weir – that is the dam that we drove through only that morning. Anyway, I was not the only one who miscalculated the mass of water that was about to hit us because some guests of ours decided to pop into town quickly for some biltong. They arrived back to discover a raging river that was once the road. They had to return to Tarkastad to watch a movie (just kidding). I think they went back and took advantage of Francine’s “bubbling” hospitality. When the water finally subsided a bit, Chris and his head boy, Vasumsie, went on a rescue mission in order to get Nick and Louisa back to safety and Blanco roasties (see photographs). Despite spending half an hour in below freezing water trying to winch trees out of the way, I think that Chris had the most fun he has had this whole year. Nick and Louisa were fantastic sports and didn’t even complain when they had to be helped through the raging water in the dark. Nick, we have all just got to hope that that biltong was mighty tasty. Nick and Louisa have some lovely friends who simply sat at the fire and said: “we told them so”!

With regards to our upgrade project, we are still chugging along and fixing things up bit by bit. Chris has also managed to con his sister and brother-in-law to swop us a lovely old cold room for an old broken down fridge we had. The fools accepted and we are delighted because we are now able to produce a lot more of our own meat for the Guest Farm. We have also had to do some culling in the Game Park and Ruben has been working his magic and making us delicious homemade biltong and boerewors. The additional water has afforded Chris the opportunity to put in some extra Lucerne fields, which will keep us going for a while.

God Bless to you all and your families

Kindest Regards,
Chris, Kim and Blanco Team