Photos: The Plantation as it is today
The plantation in the beginning days – very colonial
Our holiday break-through – Sean reading to Jess, isn’t this just too cute. She loved every minute of this closeness and he loved reading to her.
We spent the 13th exploring the Magoebaskloof area, it has winding twisty roads, with beautiful forests everywhere. The mist creeps through these trees like fingers carressing their branches and streams through onto the road to make everything seem mysterious. The perfect place to write a book with long afternoon walks or alternative for a bloody scary movie to be filmed….

We went along the road that takes you past the Magoebaskloof Dam where Letele Northern Water is managed from, onto Tzaneen and then to afternoon tea at the Tea plantation.
We met a lovely couple there, he went to school with a Farmers son and know the area very well as most of his holidays were spent in there.
He told us of places to go and areas to visit in the Kruger to see Cats etc. One of the stories was related to the beautiful tea plantation. It was a land distribution region, where the land was given back to the Tribe that lived in the area, an investor gave the tribal leader R1 million to get the farm running, the leader ran away with the money leaving the tribe destitute and with no knowledge of how to run the farm. The beautiful fields are overgrown with big tea bushes and weeds, with the grass almost growing over the roads, snakes and leopard have moved into the farm and they are battling to keep them at bay. The tribes people are now beggars and farm is in ruin. The restaurant is run by a local Tzaneen family (they pay the tribe a rental fee) who are hoping that it will stay open, but they cannot keep the ever growing bushes and grass at bay for much longer. The restaurant is about 3 km’s from the main road, so it is quite a stretch to maintain, while the locals do not try to help at all. So sad to see such beauty go to waste. These are the areas where the Government should be getting involved in and employing competent farmers to train the locals on how to farm, setting up schools for the children and getting the redistribution to work….. let’s hope