Trip to South Africa (March 2008)

The visit to South Africa was very productive and included a visit to the company whom we intend buying the roofing for the public areas from. It was decided that we would use a synthetic thatch which serve us much better as far as durability and transport costs go. Furthermore, this would also mean we could harvest rainwater from these roofs. The synthetic thatch is well manufactured with custom-made colours and looks like the natural thatch. This also bring down the total weight and stress on the overall roof structure as this product is all in all with waterproffing material and backing, max an inch thick. 'Installation' will also be a fraction of the time-frame it would take to use natural thatching on the 2,000sq.m roofs.

I also went to get some examples of toiletries for our safari tents and both Sarah and I agree with the quality that we'll be able to provide quality in even this to our guests. There was also a visit to a firm in Cape Town which it seems we'll be sourcing the majority of our linen from who is also a large supplier to the hotel and hospitality industry in SA.

Kitchen design was also on the agenda and I had a very informative and productive meeting with a specialist company in Cape Town.

'New' House in Musanze

December 2008 we moved house in Musanze. A lovely property we're renting at the moment but decided it needed some work to on the gardens and outside - for a start anyway. A little bit further from centre of town but generally still a reasonably central location and 1.5km from the site. The one side of the property was previously all dedicated to a vegetable garden which, by the time we moved in, was totally overgrown.

The idea was to convert part of this to a lawn and garden adjoining the existing front garden and formalising a section into a vegetable garden towards the back of the property. I also designed an outdoor bbq area with a banana fibre roof which would also prove to be a worthwhile 'test drive' for similar structures at Ikoro for the campsites etc.

The photos here are of the work we'd done to date and the way it looks at the moment.

Part of the rock garden at dusk I built with some of our guys using large volcanic rocks. Some rocks took 4 of us to carry.

A view of the vegetable garden with rock pathways between the beds.

View across part of the back lawn of the covered bbq and entertainment area