Update

This week’s blog post will not contain any self-indulgent philosophical musings! Somehow I’m in more of an action-oriented mood at the moment rather than in a reflective, navel-gazing mood. So I have decided to simply write a short update of the progress toward the realization of our forest dream.

We leave tomorrow for Plettenburg Bay where we will be staying in the holiday home of an ex-colleague for 8 days. However this is no holiday, but rather a business trip! We will be spending the time visiting umpteen properties in the Garden Route, which we have pre-selected as a short-list during hours of Internet research. We have several appointments set up with estate agents (usually a sub-section of humanity that I avoid at all costs!) We will also be catching up with several contacts we have made in the Garden Route over the past few years, as we believe that we need to find a way to tap into the social network there. This will enable us to be “in the know” with respect to finding possible property solutions that may work for us. Amongst others, we will be meeting with various people who opted out of the corporate world to create a self-sustaining lifestyle in the Garden Route and it should be interesting to learn from their experiences.

At this point we aren’t sure whether we may indeed find the perfect place for us next week (in which case we will sign an offer to purchase) or whether we will merely get a better idea of what is out there and at what price. We may simply find a rental property for now and then find the perfect property to purchase once we have been living there for a while. The perfect home will either have indigenous forest on the property or will border on the state-owned indigenous forest. It should have a water source and should have sufficient land for the growing of our own food. If there is a dwelling on the property that would be good, but if we find the perfect land without a dwelling, we will rent somewhere close by while we build our own home.

Our house in Cape Town is just about sold; however we are waiting to hear about bond approval in one case, and the property of prospective buyers being sold first, in another case. Once we return to Cape Town, we will be selling my partner’s car (we have a buyer), buy our pick-up and start planning the big move.

So, after a month of relaxation and relative peace-and-quiet, it’s all happening now, which is very exciting and also quite intimidating. However, we continue to follow the dictates of our hearts and it all feels just right.

I’ll be back in a week’s time, hopefully with some good news that will take us several steps closer to our dream!

Lisa

Next: Paradise Found!