Chrislin African Lodge in a snapshot

Watch our updated Chrislin video for a little snapshot of our Addo Accommodation.

We have a 15% discount on all accommodation, B&B, until July 2015 for DIRECT bookings.

www.chrislin.co.za

Chrislin's never in the dark - Generator in Action!

Chrislin African Lodge not only has an Addo Winter Special of 15% discount, it's also gearing up for the Kirkwood Wildsfees!

AND, best of all.... we'll keep toasty warm with a constant source of power! 

Our generator will ensure your drinks are chilled or piping hot, your stomach full and gastronomically warm, rooms cosy, devices charged and skin tingling from hot showers to wash off the Addo dust from all your Addo adventures!

See you soon :-D

Spekboom

The indigenous and evergreen Spekboom occurs widespread in the Eastern Cape, especially right here in the Sundays River Valley.

There is even a Spekboom Tented Camp in the Addo Elephant National Park!

Addo's Suikerbossie Nursery owner, Stef Pringle, says that spekboom makes a gorgeous garden plant used to add colourful and lush dimension to an indigenous aloe or succulent garden with its sappy green foliage and spectacular display of pink/purple flowers from October/November. This will attract numerous bird species as well as insects *[and elephants ;) ] to your garden. This beautiful indigenous plant is very hardy, requires minimal attention and easy to grow from cuttings. Great  contribution to our environment by cultivation and growing spekboom.  

It can reach heights of about 2.5m to 5m tall 'trees'. Locals use them as hedges to prevent dust from entering the homestead while some farmers are planting  Spekboom  for it's exceptional ability to take big quantities of carbon dioxide out of the air and convert it into oxygen. It has enormous carbon-storing capabilities. Its capacity to offset harmful carbon emissions is compared to that of moist, subtropical forest. This remarkable plant is unique in that it stores solar energy to photosynthesise at night. This makes spekboom thicket 10 times more effective per hectare at carbon fixing than any tropical rain forest. Each hectare of spekboom could capture 4,2 tons of carbon yearly. The makes South Africa very popular on the international carbon dioxide sequestration commercial market.

The stem, which can reach a diameter of 20cm, has a corklike appearance. The bright green fleshy leaves have an egg like shape. As the tree ages the colour turn yellowish.

The English name, Elephant food, originates from the habit of elephants to eat the top shoots of the "trees", causing the plants to grow and spread horizontally.

Want to read more? Spekboom Anthony Mills shares some info in Spekboom The Miracle Plant. Fascinating reading!

Want to buy? 

Go online to The Spekboom Foundation  or call Johan Swart:

Send us a email and we will get into contact with you. We can do any order from 1 plant to 1 000 000 plants.

SPEKBOOM ROOTED PLANTS GROWN IN RECYCLED PLASTIC BOTTLES

Prices:

1-49 Plants R50 each
50-5000 Plants R40 each
5000 or more Plants R30 each

Call Johan Swart

TEL: 042 230 0440
FAX: 042 230 0575
MOBILE: 076 737 3694

Email: karoo@kirkwood.co.za 

Happy Easter, with love from Chrislin

Travel thoughts from Chrislin's Pool area

Addo Polo Club

Addo Polo Club

The Addo Polo Club is starting to thrive again with an influx of young families returning or moving to the Sundays River Valley. It has come a long way since it is was established in 1923!

Hermitage House, the local independent primary school use the sports facilities and every pupil and his/her family is a member.

There are more events happening at the Polo Club, which is exciting to see. There is a weekly Darts Challenge every Tuesday, Pilates on a Wednesday evening, Horse Riding lessons on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and a few chukkers of polo most Wednesday's and Saturday/Sunday.

Like the Addo Polo Club Facebook page for more updates and events. A website is in the making!

Addo Polo Club news on the Facebook page

The Zuurberg Inn, Eastern Cape

 
 The Zuurberg Inn is very much a part of Port Elizabeth's history, firstly because of its situation as a resting place for travellers on the road to and from the north, and then, before the advent of fast cars and aeroplanes and week-ends at Sun City, it was a perfect distance away from the town for a week-end visit by train or, later, in the family Ford.
    The Inn is on the farm Doorn Nek, originally part of the Uitenhage Districts and later part of Alexandria, so it is for references to the farm that one must look to begin with. We are told that is was on this land that Andries Stockenstorm, Landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, and some of his party were killed in December 1811 during the Frontier War. A post was probably established here when the war was over and the relics of it can be seen around on the the Inn's fireplaces.
    According to a list of his property, sold after his death, the owner of the farm until 1838 was the Malay Port Elizabethan, Fortuin Weys, and a list of Field Cornetcies of 1849 gives the owner as one William Matthews.
    In 1848 a dramatic change in the story of Doorn Nek began with the building of the pass through the Zuurberg to provide a direct route from Port Elizabeth to Graaff-Reinet, Somerset East, Cradock and Colesberg. The pass was commenced by Henry Fancourt White, who has close ties with Port Elizabeth's history, and finished by his successor, Matthew Woodfield, also with Port Elizabeth connections. The pass was opened to the public in 1858 and cost £1654 14s 1d.
    During the Smithfield gold rush of 1854 a D. Harvey offered a half-way house - half-way between Port Elizabeth and Somerset East - at Doorn Nek, but it wasn't until 1861 that the story of the Inn really began, when John Matthews, the Zuurberg Hotel and Sanatorium already had a respectable, family-holiday aspect, brought both by fashion and the railway.
    Various owners and managers followed, but a pattern had been established. Visitors came for weekends or for longer and sometimes to convalesce. They travelled by train as far as Coerney where transport met them and conveyed them up the pass to the Inn. Tennis, quoits, croquet and golf were available, as well as pleasant walks. Special concessions were sometimes offered on rail fares over week-ends. The Anglo-Boer War brought a temporary halt to the stream of visitors. For one thing a pass was needed during the later part of the war for any Port Elizabethan wanting to go further afield than Zwartkops, and at the beginning of 1901 the owner;s horses were all commandeered and he could no longer transport his guests from Coerney. Smuts and his commando came as far as Kirkwood and the Kariega Valley, but during their few days on the Zuurberg were not in the vicinity on the Inn.
    Around this time the existing Inn was burned down and the property was acquired by F.W. Bracken, an experienced hotelier who had owned the Imperial Hotel at the top of Russell Road and the Central Hotel before buying the Zuurberg Sanatorium, a "great structure, superior to anything in the Midlands." The genial Mr Bracken and after him his son, Reg Bracken, ran the Inn until 1946. Modern conveniences arrived bit by bit: electric bells, shower baths, running water in the bedrooms. A large L-shaped double-storey building was erected behind the familiar roadside part, and seen for the first time in photographs gives quite a shock. The Brackens sold the Inn to a group of Port Elizabeth businessmen and some time after a serious fire occurred, presumably the cause of the disappearance of the large annex.
    The Inn no longer has a main road past it's front door, in fact the old pass is a quiet country road nowadays, with the speeding traffic following newer, tarred roads and the once bare hills around the Inn are covered with trees, but though altered, this place is as beautiful and memorable to us as it has been to visiting Bayonians for generations.

Zuurberg Inn front verandah 2014

Sources: CApe Government Gazettes, Eastern Province HErald, Advertiser, Port ELizabeth Directories