Click on a photo to enlarge it.
We set off at 9-30am and it took us all day to drive to the fishing lodge. We seem to have landed in the back end of
beyond - just us and the bears! The nearest civilisation is an hour away (2 hours in Winnie) and consists of a small
town. We looked for a supermarket but couldn't find one!
We drove along a gravel road and finally got to the fishing lodge at 5-30pm. The temperature had gone down to 9°C and
it was very cold but sunny. Part of the grounds still lay under snow and the lake was still frozen over. We also
found out that there was neither water nor electricity!! What a welcome to our new home for the summer!
The lodge is situated in a forest overlooking a lake and is quite an idyllic setting. There are 6 cabins and 3
apartments build in a semi-circle facing the lake. There is also a large house near the entrance to the lodge where
guests stay if there is no room in any of the cabins or apartments.
After the introductions, our first task was to climb through the windows of two apartments to open up the doors from
the inside as there were no keys! Our second task was a real test - removing dead mice from the toilets in one of the
cabins where they had caused a mess attacking all the toilet paper and dragging it all over the place, before
drowning themselves in the toilet bowl which had been filled with pink anti-freeze over the winter! We had to
improvise to get them out and fetched a plastic bottle from Winnie, cut off the bottom half to make a kind of scoop
to get them out! Yuk! The pink anti-freeze had turned their feet and faces pink! We also had to get rid of several
dead birds that lay on the verandas after hitting the windows.
We were shown to our apartment where we would be staying as it was far too cold to stay in Winnie. It was down to
minus 8°C overnight - too cold without electricity to switch on our heater. We put on the log fire which we had to
keep going overnight and it was only 1°C the next day when we started preparing the cabins after their icy winter
for the first guests. Not an easy task without electricity or water! Dustpan and brush instead of a hoover, and
window cleaner to clean the toilets sinks and showers as no water could be put into the drainage pipes otherwise
they would freeze overnight and cause even more problems. The laundry couldn´t be done either, so we had to make
the beds using sheets etc that had been in the wash house for over 7 months.
On Wednesday, it snowed and the whole place was turned into a winter landscape. The first guests were due to arrive
on Friday but the snow had made the chances of getting the lodge ready for guests very slim. Even the tanker got
stuck trying to deliver fuel for the generator. We had to fetch water from the lake in 10 gallon containers and had
to be careful not to fall into the icy water. The only toilet consisted of an old outhouse (drop toilet) which was
not very pleasant after a few days of use!
Despite all this, the first guests refused to stay in a hotel and insisted on coming up to the lodge. The guests that
come here are absolutely obsessed with fishing - morning, noon and night. No electricity - who cares! No shower - no
problem! However, about 5 hours after they arrived, we finally got electricity. It was another day before we got
water in the main lodge but nowhere else. Finally, late on Saturday evening, we finally got our first shower here!
It´s certainly hard work here - between 13 and 16 hours per day, 7 days a week. There is so much to learn and because
we were only getting an average of 4-5 hours sleep per night, our concentration level wasn´t at its best! Two other
girls should have got here on Thursday 13th May, the day before the first guests arrived. But because of the
situation, they were sent back as it was believed that the guests would be staying in a hotel! So it meant we were
on our own to do all the cooking and cleaning. Sleep was a luxury! More than 5 hours, not possible! But at least
there were only 7 guests and 8 employees to feed and look after during the first week.
Fortunately, the cooking is made a bit easier because there are only 7 different evening meals which are served in
rotation as the guests do not stay longer than 7 days. Also there is a salad bar every evening, which consists of
tomato, broccoli, bean, cucumber, and potato salads and coleslaw along with various dressings and pickles. Breakfasts
consist of 3 different meals served in rotation:- bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast; sausages and pancakes which the
American guests eat together with maple syrup! And finally sausages and French toast (bread dipped in a mix of eggs,
milk and cinnamon and fried on the griddle) - and of course, maple syrup!
We have had to learn how to use a griddle - a large metal plate which is used to cook virtually everything. Besides
fried or scrambled, the Americans love "over easy" eggs, which are fried on the griddle and then turned over for a
few seconds so that the yolks are still runny, and then flipped back over onto the plates to serve them. We ruined a
few eggs at first! But it didn´t take long to get it right and we got a lot of praise from the guests who said they´d
never had such good eggs in all the years they´d been coming here!
Lunch is always the same - sliced potatoes, fried on the griddle with bacon and onions, pasta salad, beans in tomato
sauce and freshly caught fish (by the guests themselves) which is fried in egg and breadcrumbs. Sometimes we also
made a homemade soup to go with it as it was so cold.
Evening meals are ham with sauerkraut and red cabbage, pork chops, goulash, curried chicken fricassee, spaghetti
Bolognese, meatloaf, and T-bone steaks. Everything is freshly made and it seems that the guests love this stuff -
probably because it's freshly made and the Americans are only used to packaged stuff or something from McDonalds!
