South Africa is known for sunshine and heat, but every now and then we are hit with a cold and wet snap and we hold our breaths with the hope of snow.
Last month, the weather forecast gave us a 100% chance of snow overnight on Friday the 20th. Much excitement hit the hospitality establishments of the Drakensberg, because Snow = Guests!
The calls came in flurries. It was a perfect situation – a snowy weekend and a public holiday Tuesday meant that masses of people were going to make a long weekend of it. A very nice income boost to a traditionally quiet month.
Around mid-morning on Friday the snow began to fall and things felt a little unsettled: these were big flakes, falling with intent. By mid-afternoon, the area was blanketed with a thin layer of very pretty white. However, the temperature was falling and the roads were icing up.
By 4pm, the Oliviershoek Pass (the main access route to KwaZulu-Natal from the Free State and Joburg) was congested to a point of standstill and cars were lining up for kilometres into the Free State.
Many travellers would end up sleeping in their cars on the Pass as the snow continued to fall. Overnight, around 50cm of snow fell and kept falling into Saturday morning.
Locals team up to help travellers
The local community mobilised to rescue those stranded on the pass with 4x4s, tractors and a privately owned grader. The farmers of the Drakensberg joined the hospitality teams and the local municipal disaster management team to help clear the road and get the people to warmth and safety.
Thousands of Rands in diesel were selflessly spent to help the travellers. It was amazing to see people coming forward with their resources to simply help. One of the special things about this crazy country is the willingness of our people to simply get involved and help without thinking of personal expense or reward. This rescue effort was another example of Ubuntu that runs deep in our social fabric.
The snow caused disruptions in electricity supply, cell phone signal and the Wi-Fi connection. The generator was fired up, but a full lodge, combined with cold weather meant the machine was overloaded. This meant Cath had to trudge through the snow to each suite switching off geysers and advising guests of the travel disruptions.
Those scheduled to leave Montusi on Saturday had to stay on and some even missed flights. We managed to get messages to those scheduled to arrive on Saturday telling them not to come.
Mop-up operation
Without comms and the ability to drive anywhere, only a few of our staff members made it to work. So the skeleton staff of eight people had to scurry to ensure our full house of guests were fed and comfortable while saving our infrastructure from the weight of the snow.
All our trees are shaped for Africa, not snow! The sound of breaking branches was like gunshots going off in the night. Almost every tree has suffered and the clean-up operation of branches and leaves took two weeks!
Thankfully, our thatched roofs shrugged off the weight effectively, but the shade cloth of the vegetable garden was not as resilient. We will have to rebuild that whole structure. We got off very lightly compared to others in terms of damage to buildings.
We are incredibly grateful to our guests for being so gracious and patient as the hiccups and challenges kept rolling in.
By the time the roads had cleared enough to escape the mountains, our group of snowbound guests had become fast friends and we were sad to see them move on.
