I have a good idea, Colin said to me Monday morning. You can call your next Cape Crawl: A River Runs Through It.

Have you ever experienced that moment, when you do not need a mirror image or a photo to know what your expression looks like. In fact, you can feeeel it, and you know that the look on your face is enough to make Medusa cower. Somehow, I think that was my face. If looks could kill, Colin would be a Friendly Ghost by now. So how did this come about. Before I break it down for you: a bit of background.

The Bot River runs through the farm where we live for now. At the best of times, it is a little trickle of water. After a heavy down pour, it flexes its muscle a bit, and for a day or two, actually may look like a river. I looked on Google maps, wanting to find the source of this river, but not even Google could tell me the answer to this. The little blue line on the map sort of petered out and disappeared into nothingness.

We do not have rivers like Europe has. Europe has big rivers. Back in the day, you could have the entire Spanish Armada sailing down river, on route to invading another small principality. Now, given that the Armada was a fleet of war ships consisting of 130 ships with 30 000 troops and 2 500 guns, one could imagine that you would need a big river for that. America also has a few big rivers. I can certainly think of one that was big enough to accidentally land an Airbus A320 on. South Africa, on the other hand, well, it depends. Way back, during the Boer War, the British had in mind sailing a ship up the Apies River and attacking Pretoria, the Capital City of the then old Boer Republic. The ship was shipped out, transported inland to be assembled, ready to float upriver into Pretoria. Now, the Apies River, unlike the Bot River, does have a source, which is located just south of the city, and it flows northwards into the Pienaars River. But, like the Bot River, a spot of rain, and that little trickle of brown water, turns into a massively churning water mass, violent enough to sink the Armada in a blink.

So, what happened to turn our little trickle of mud into a raging river, so powerful that it washed out an entire pear orchard, a couple of sheep, a farm dog or two, an old tractor, most of a shanty town, at least 3 bridges (that I know of), two of which are very old and historical bridges, swallow up at least a 30 meter stretch of the N2 National Highway and land our little patch of farm not only on national TV, but also on international TV?

It involves a low-pressure system, cut off by another low-pressure system, a river with a dubious source, a spot of climate change, and more water than you can possibly imagine.

It started off on Friday. I was watching a TV weather presenter talking about a low-pressure system, that was cutting off another low-pressure system, and all this could bring about heavy rain. Oh goody. I thought. We all love rainy days. Rainy days in South Africa means cinnamon pancakes, and we all love those.

Next, lets jump to the Weather App on my Cell Phone. It predicted some rain, over a few days. A bit of wind, and depending on the time of day, the wind could be a tad stronger than expected.  It was a long weekend here by us, and after the usual adulting on Saturday, Colin and I set off for a drive to Betty’s Bay on Sunday. You know, just to get out and flap our wings a bit. The drive was pleasant, cloudy, light rain. The sea looked “churning” rather than rough, and we returned home. Once home, the rain carried on. A soft coastal rain, nothing hectic. We went to bed and fell asleep to the soft pitter-patter of raindrops.

Monday morning – day 3 off the long weekend, my body clock woke me up the usual time. I laid in bed, trying to not open my eyes. I could hear an eerie rustling noise outside and thought to myself: that must be the wind. You know the one that the low-pressure system, cut off by another low-pressure system, was supposed to bring? I popped one eye open. Hmmm. No. It can’t be wind, the leaves on the trees are hardly moving. So, I popped open the other eye, and that is when it dawned on me. HKGK. (In Afrikaans: Hier Kom Groot K@K! – no translation needed. Use your imagination.) The humble, hardly a brown trickle Bot River had turned into the biggest water mass you could imagine. Did any of you ever see that film about the Tsunami when it struck? Yup. I had visions of that. I woke Colin up. Gosh, I said, you have to see this. We both dashed out, in our pajamas (clearly, I did not know about the TV crew who had already gathered, or I would have dressed into a little something more appropriate) and rushed to the front of the main house, where from that beautiful gable topped stoep, we looked down onto something neither of us actually have words for. Either it was reality hitting home, or the water mass gained momentum, but throughout the day, it just got bigger, faster and more destructive.

Truly, it is one of those experiences one must live through to grasp the reality of it. Once word got out of the destruction taking place, not only in our part of the province, but the greater Western Cape, we were inundated with messages from friends and family checking in on us. So many of those messages I did not respond to. Firstly, we were completely cut off for a good 36 hours, with no water, electricity, or cell phone reception. When eventually we did receive the messages, there were just too many to respond to. But more than that, I think it took until today, 72 hours later, for us to actually find the energy to respond.

To all those who tried to contact us, those who sent messages or tried calling. Those who tried to phone others to find out if they had word on our wellbeing, allow me to collectively apologise for not responding to you. You do not have to have firsthand experience trauma to be affected by it. It can happen by just observing it. Our house did not wash away. Our building site is safe. Other than being cut off, we were dry. But the experience, and seeing how very badly others were affected, has left both Colin and me rather battered.

That was until of course Colin said:

I have a good idea. You can call your next Cape Crawl: A River Runs Through It.