April 18, 2025
Another travel day is upon us! Before we got to that part of the day Lenny and I headed out early so he could feed the horses again and get one more ride on his buddy Cheeky. Ollie was more interested in a new math game on his iPad so Kayleen and him stayed to defend the tent from monkeys.
Lenny avoided getting stepped on again and was happy to feed all the horses carrots and brush them. He made it very clear from the start to Kathryn that he was here only to ride Cheeky. It seemed to make her happy that he had so much love for the horse that stepped on him. Even with our limited time knowing him Kayleen and I decided Cheeky is very much Lenny’s spirit animal.
We returned to the tent to have a light breakfast and finish packing up the car. Fortunately no monkey raids had occurred while we were gone. The two young English girls at the horse barn with Lenny and I confirmed their tent had also been raided. They also let us know they heard Kayleen screaming yesterday morning when we were present for the monkey raid during breakfast.
Lenny fed the chickens one more time on our way out and we were off to our Hotel in Plettenberg Bay.
The drive was only an hour and a half and Kayleen found a better reading of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It was nice to not have the volume go from barely audible to shattering your eardrums. Ollie is very into it and Lenny just fades in and out of sleep but remains quiet.
The boys were thrilled to see they had their own room, adjoining ours, with a TV in it at the hotel. Ollie was driven to figure out the clicker, no doubt thinking up some scheme where he would watch TV in the middle of the night.
Quickly after our arrival we got to up our critter count. A bunny at the hotel, crabs at the beach, and a surf caster pulled in a 3 foot shark. The shark caused quiet the crowd to gather and one guy laid on the shark to stop it from thrashing as another removed the hook with very long metal pliers before they released it.
We walked down to the beach from our hotel to check it out and find lunch. There was a nice, mostly outdoor, restaurant we tried but were told the food would be an hour wait even though there was a table. We decided to try elsewhere, probably shouldn’t have, and ended up getting a not great lunch a few doors down. Kayleen and I decided it was the worst meal for the cost of the trip yet! We had to feed the boys as the hangry faces were out so it was more a meal of necessity then anything else.
We walked around the beach area to explore more and Lenny’s mood continued even after eating. He has a real disdain for sand in his sandal which makes little sense given how much he cares about having a bucket of sand in his pants when he is allowed to go in the water. Ollie just took off his shoes to walk around barefoot. Most kids at all the parks we have gone to usually are playing barefoot so maybe he is picking it up from them.
We had dinner at the hotel and thankfully it was a quiet night at the restaurant. We were all tired but Lenny was VERY tired.
We played Uno while waiting for our food to come with Lenny on my team. He is still learning to play but knows enough that getting more cards is not how you win. We kept having to pick up more cards and eventually he tried to swipe all the cards of the table.
Both boys did a poor job eating their dinner and their behavior was poor so we wrapped the meal early. They both were not as bothered by this as we expected so we knew it was really time for them to be off to bed.
