We had left Pretoria after the church service (19 December 2010) at around 5pm. We arrived home to a welcoming power outage at around 9:30pm. That means it took us 4.5 hours to cover 100km from Pretoria to the farm.

We knew it was quite a dramatic day when we saw the rain pouring down as we drove home. Someone who lives in the valley warned us that the roads were bad, and that we should come home by the alternate route; which we did.

My parents were travelling at the same time as us, so we met up on the road. Entering the valley on the normally good route, we found ourselves unable to get through because the water had flooded the road for a distance of approximately 70 metres. I rolled up my pants (which really didn't make any difference after all) and waded almost the entire length of the flooded area and concluded that it wasn't safe to cross in our cars. The water level was well above my knees.

We phoned my sister who was at home and asked her to check the other road to see if we could get in. She did, and said the road was dry. Turning around, we headed toward the other road, but by the time we got there, the water had burst over that road too.

There was a lot of fierce lightning in the storm, so I waited until the lightning had died down before I waded through that overflowing water too. Even after all the time we waited, that too was too deep and flowing too strongly to cross. Another man came from the other side in a 4x4, and his vehicle went right down until his front bumper was under the water. He got a fright because he nearly got washed away.

I decided to return to the first place where we had not been able to cross, knowing that the water would recede there more quickly. We were pleased to find the water level much lower, but we also found something else. In the water where I had been wading, there was a python, enjoying the pool. We waited, the girls squeeling in the car, until the python had crossed far enough for us to drive behind him, and we drove through the pool.

The water was deeper than I had expected, but not so deep that we couldn't get through. It was very close. The next day I found water even in the air filter box. We wouldn't have liked to have got stuck in that pool in the dark with the python swimming around behind us.