The back garden, looking out towards the cul-de-sac where we live.
You can't really see them here, but there are termite traps around the perimeter of the house. Termites are a big problem here, because the houses are made out of plasterboard and wood, an irresistible treat for the little buggers, they just can't stay away.
We actually have a bigger problem with another type of ant which we haven't been able to identify. They range between 1cm and 2cm long, and possess a fearsome set of jaws. They come wandering across the floor (we still haven't figured out where they come in), with no apparent aim in life other than to scare you to death.
Note the lack of burglar bars. The only "barrier" outside the sliding door is a screen door to keep the bugs out. There are no security gates here (most houses don't have them fitted). That's the geyser in front of the wheelie bins. Holds enough hot water for about one and a half showers. Yours truly usually gets the half-portion.
View from our second-floor balcony, down the road at some of the other units.
The garages all have automatic doors, and are long enough for two medium-sized cars to fit, end to end.
The balcony, from ground level. It's about big enough for two small chairs and two friendly people. We need to get some small chairs tho, to be able to sit out there comfortably.
The front of the house, from ground level. That garage on the right is ours.
Now for some shots of the inside (we just cleaned, so I seized the opportunity for a photo op! :)).
The kitchen area we've turned into a breakfast nook. The table and chairs and the sideboard with the microwave are from Ikea, and had to be assembled from flat-packs. I couldn't believe that the table and chairs fitted into the box that they did! There's actually 4 chairs, but one is doing double duty as a coffee table in the lounge area.
The only "furniture" that came with the place was the oven and hob, and the built-in cupboards.
We've had to buy everything else, at a cost in ZAR that I don't even want to contemplate. We splurged and bought quite nice stuff, since we wanted to get new furniture right off the bat.
Luckily the price of everything you buy here is usually open for negotiation, and you can play different stores off against each other to get a better deal. M is actually really good at this, keeping track of what cost how much and where, she's saved us several hundred dollars in terms of white goods (washing machine, tumble dryer fridge, etc.)
Amazing all the things you suddenly realise you need, like iron, toaster, kettle, dustbin, drying rack, tea towels...
The next pic is a slightly squished panorama of the lounge area, sorry about the fun-house/fish-eye effect... We haven't had to use the aircon yet, tho we've been told we'll need it, come summer. It's difficult to find CRT TVs here, everything is flat-panel LCD or plasma, and all of them have about 50 different kinds of AV inputs (including PC VGA) so you can attach just about anything to them. We hooked up the eee pc to the 37" just to see what it looks like, and it's great...if you need to read your email or browse the web from 50 feet away! :)
We still need to get a couple of odds and ends, like a proper coffee table, and I need to move the ADSL modem and wifi (behind the tv, on the cardboard box) upstairs and out of the way. The TV stand is another Ikea special, had to put that one together too.
Finally, a view in the other direction, from our upstairs balcony. Straight ahead is a small park, which is regularly crawling with screaming ankle-biters. There's a guy who comes by every couple of weeks to check that all the swings swing and the seesaw seesaws and that the roundabout...er.. turns. He keeps the grass short and gets rid of broken glass and other things. Makes a change to see a neighbourhood park actually being maintained and being used by the people it was intended for, instead of acting as a rusting, overgrown haven for bergies, druggies and muggers.
On the right of the park is an area that's been marked as a reserve, so nothing more will be developed there, no buildings or parks or anything. It's very dense bush, home to a dawn chorus that consists of galahs, magpies, kookaburras and black crows. Said chorus insists on waking us up at about 04h30, and it's a racket you just cannot ignore! Big white cockatoos also fly around wild here, which takes a bit of getting used to. Every time I see one, I think someone's pet has escaped :)
We've also seen a couple of big flying foxes, but not up close and personal. They're quite eerie to watch: really big, and completely silent in flight, even when it flaps past, a few meters over your head.
More piccies of the upstairs when we've cleaned up there a bit and got rid of the last of the packing boxes... will put up some pics of the spiders too.
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