This Week's Update

After 10 years of being in operation Big Sky Lodges has decided it is time to do a refurb on Erongo Wilderness Lodge! The tents are being redone – not just redone, replaced entirely with brand new ones! The new ones will be a little more lush, a little bigger, a little more luxurious and a touch more resistant to the elements! We are so looking forward to seeing the end result.

" Interior of our original tents"

" Profile View of an Original Tent"

The team of expert camp builders started on Sunday, the 13^th November 2011. The first 2 tents were taken down – thatch roofing, canvas and everything in between! This itself a 2 - 3 day procedure and takes patience and intense energy, from all involved, the builders, our amazing staff, and ourselves. Things need to be boxed, labeled and stored in such a manner that everybody knows instantly what is what! Possible, you'd think? We'll let you know when we start moving stuff back in!

" Tent 7 coming down"

Since then Pepe and his team have been working at the speed of lightning to finish these 2 tents, in order to move on!  As with all things building, there are always complications or little unexpected hiccups. A week into these projects and (as to be expected) 2 days behind schedule, Tent 7 is up…albeit with no doors at this point, but it is up.

"The Poles that will hold Tent7 up"

" Tent7 going up"

"Tent 7's new Shell" 

The new tent structure for Tent 8 is up…well sort of. The poles which need to be fitted into each other and become a Meru shaped form of copper/steel piping ribbing are up, and it’s being double checked that these are right.  So far so good and it seems to be standing! Hoorrah!

"Tent 8 New decking"

"Tent 8's basic structure"

Last week we met with a tiny little glitch – luckily for us though this was fixable. Unfortunately for us it did mean that we are now little behind schedule again…or still…or as expected with these things.

As a result of the glitch we have an expert tent builder coming in to assist with the finer details of the finishes in the Tents. The plan is he will be showing us (by this I meant the builders) what needs doing and how this will need doing.  Hopefully his presence and his assistance will mean that overall the process of getting the tents up and furnished will be an easier and quicker one.

The tents do not have doors in them, as this is left to the builder's/owner's discretion to do - what needs to happen is the door shapes get cut into the canvas and the Wooden door frames get slotted in and secured by the same poles used for the structure. This sounds quite simple, but is in truth quite complicated.

Yesterday , Tent 4 was started on, this means, that all furniture was removed, the thatching is being taken down and the canvas of the old tents has been removed. Now…we have a little lapa! There is still a little thatch left on the roof! If all goes according to plan, the full tent 4 will be down by tomorrow!

"Tent 4 being taken down, bit by bit"

We had a few days of crazy cloud build up with massive humidity and weather reports promising rain! It seemed this was not to be, as this went on for 6 days, we smelt the rain, we saw the clouds, we got to savour the anticipation of it with no rain! In a way this was great, as rain really would have slowed the renovating process quite a lot, on the other hand, this was sad, as it would have been lovely to see our first real rain of the season. No rain is great for the building as it means zero interference and no unwanted delays or breaks in the work. 

"Clouds looming overhead"

"Another threat of Rain"

Now it is back to being hot and dry with curious gusts of wind. The wind is quite pleasant, but doesn’t cool one down for long.

I am secretly hoping it will rain in the middle of the night, just a little bit, without getting in the way of our guests' enjoyment, without interfering in the building and without wetting the boxes which hold the tents.


Here's to lovely breezes, great days and a nearing weekend and to  holding thumbs that it all goes according to plan!
Cheers once more,
Back tomorrow for news on this exciting project!