Click on a photo to enlarge it.
The week started well when Kirsten dropped a hot baked potato in Helens lap! Then we nearly didn´t have enough
chocolate ice cream to serve the guests because Lisa eats so much of it! She literally eats half a one gallon
bucket at a time! At breakfast, when she eats oatie-o´s (honey loops) she leaves so many soggy ones on the table
after she´s left, that one morning we spelled her name with them and told her there was a message for her on the
table!
On Wednesday one of the guests asked for a face and hand towel so Helen sent one of the girls off to the laundry
to get them and put them in the cabin before the owners wife found out about it. The owners wife had been continually
telling us she was going to fire the girls and we were trying our hardest to make sure she didn´t. Later that day
Germany got kicked out of Euro 2004 by losing in the first group matches against a Czech B team! At least England
got through to the quarter finals and lost to one of the finalists!
The rest of the week was taken up with camp problems. Firstly, the owner shot at a bear who was at the pit. He
missed but 5 minutes later the police came around because they had heard the shot. So then the owners had a lot
of explaining to do, not just because they are not supposed to shoot at bears as the bear shooting season doesn´t
open until the 12th of August, but also because of all the food scraps left at the pit and you are not allowed to
feed the bears!
The next problem was Minnows - small fish used as bait for Walleye fishing. You have to have a permit to catch them
so most people buy them off people who have paid a great deal of money for such a license. Our lodge needs dozens of
them every week and they don´t come cheap. So the owner goes and catches his own even though he doesn´t have a
license! Unfortunately, the "minnow" man came around when they weren´t expecting him, saw the illegal ones in the
pond and threatened to report them unless they pay him for the minnows!
Then 2 guests who had never been to the lodge called up the day before they wanted to arrive and booked a few days
stay. At first the owners wife was really pleased until her husband decided that because of everything else that had
happened that week, they could be government spies! Now that really put the cat among the pigeons!! The owner and his
wife spent the next 24 hours rushing around all over the place trying, we believe, to make the camp legal! The bear
pit suddenly got filled in and we were told that all food scraps would be put in the bin and any liquid waste would
be put into containers and taken to the rubbish dump. The owners gun got hidden. The owners wife got the spies cabin
ready herself! We´d never seen them looking so worried.
We were told that we weren't allowed to talk to these “spies” – pretty difficult, seeing as we had to serve them their
meals! So, of course we spoke to them. The owners wife had often “warned” us about various guests and gave us the
impression that they were not very nice or problematic. But we always found that the guests were really nice and got
on really well with them. So we were left wondering why she warned us in the first place. Probably because she wanted
us to get the wrong impression about them, treat them differently and not get on so well with them! It didn't work
though! It also turned out that she would tell the guests all sorts of things about us and overheard her complaining
about us to some guests. Maybe she was trying to reduce our tips, who knows! But if you own a lodge, the last thing you
do is criticise the staff because it gives a bad impression of the lodge. Oh well, things are just different here!
It turned out, of course, that the new guests weren´t spies at all! So then they took it out on us. Firstly, the
owner came into the kitchen with one of the guides, poured oil all over the fried potatoes that Helen was cooking on
the griddle, got a spatula and chopped some of the potatoes up, each time saying "not cooked" "not cooked" so that
the guide would think that the potatoes weren´t cooked through. We complained about what he was doing and he accused
us of serving raw potatoes! Well we knew that that was a load of rubbish but the guide believed him!
Then the works boat was missing so Kirsten had to run around a lot to find a guide to drive her out with the shore
lunch stuff in one of the other boats that are different to the works boat. The owners wife knew that morning that
our boat had been taken by one of the other guides but hadn´t told us so that we would have to sort out the problem
in the last minute and be late for shore lunch. And, hopefully, get us into the bad books with the guests! But that
didn´t work either because Kirsten got there on time and had a laugh with the guests!
Unfortunately, the mosquitoes started coming out in force this week. After a virtually sleepless night trying to kill
all the mosquitoes inside Winnie, we eventually got our mosquito net out. The next day, Kirsten fixed it over the
alcove, so that we could at least get some sleep.
On Sunday evening, the owner went out the back of the kitchen with the guides and they started throwing stones at the
squirrels! The owner threw the first and then the guides just copied. The fact that two of the guides are studying to
be a zoologist and a biologist doesn´t seem to stop them copying the owner and throwing stones at the poor squirrels!
They seem to be brainwashed. On the other hand, it seems that if you try to get into the good books with the owner
and his wife, it makes life easier to work here. Very sad!
