VISITORS ATTACKED BY GIANT JUMPING DINOSAUR – SUN CITY 1990
Some of our fondest memories of all of our travels, were the times when we had visitors from home. Although I was mostly busy at work on these occasions, Deysi always had time for guests and it gave her some of her happiest moments. In this Post today I am going to deal with our first visit in South Africa, by her younger sister “Lalitas” (auntie) and Cleef (uncle). They pretty much visited every place that we worked over the years. The girls loved having guests, and especially aunty and uncle. They knew some serious spoiling was coming their way.
As usual I did not have to do much, basically go to work, feed some cash into the coffers for the upcoming adventures and then hop on for the ride. Most of my posts of these memories will be in pictures, but there were a couple of instances that need a little more explanation. One of these is below.
The first incident was absolutely spectacular, unfortunately it caught me at one of the few times where I did not have a video camera available. It occurred when we took them to see Sun City (you remember the casino, park, golf course, lounging by the pool with my eyes closed, eating the croc story). As always it was great fun. One evening, with the girls tucked in, with room service and a maid, the 4 of us decided to go into the big dining room for a special dinner. It was magnificent.
The dining room had sliding windows, floor to ceiling, which opened about halfway around the room, and provided a feeling of being in Africa, on safari. The night was dark, the sounds of Africa were haunting, the food was excellent and the atmosphere electric. It had been a hot day around the resort and now, sitting down for our dinner, a cool breeze was creeping thru the room and adding to the effect of Wild Africa. We were just starting into our main course, everything was perfect, when a “wild” 3 inch long “beast” of a grasshopper made a jump from the African night, across the dining room and “yup” right smack into the middle of aunty’s steak. This was a jump that would have done an olympian proud!
They looked at each other for a second, the poor ol’ grasshopper was now in her food up to his little grasshopper knees, with burned grasshopper feet (her steak had just come from the grill), and now had a heart attack upon confronting a giant staring at him; simultaneously Aunty let out a screech and fainted dead away (just kidding). She did let out a screech though, but it was for Cleeeeeeeeffffff. Uncle Cleeef reaches over and casually backhands that grasshopper back into Africa. Good thing it didn’t land on mine or his plates, we “mighta” eaten it. Anyway with two big grasshopper “footprints” in her food, she was not about to eat it.
As soon as the rest of the patrons got out from under their tables, where they had all dived at the first scream of terror, the waiters whisked away the offending dish and scurried about finding her some new food. I thought it was hilarious until I got the look from Deysi, that implied, “shut it now, o’ you in big trouble”. I stuffed my napkin in my mouth and stifled myself. Ahhh fond memories!
