The Chimp knocked up this awesome little video of our on water action, he had some trouble with the copyrighted music he used (youTube doesn’t allow it) so he used their auto substitution system, certainly adds some emotional punch to the piece.

Last weekend the boys and I headed bush for a weekend of camping and kayaking, Rick and the Chimp both own their own yaks so the rest of us had to hire some form Albury and drag them across.

We started from the base of the lake Buffalo damn wall, riding the yaks down the road embankment then throwing them off a cliff and climbing down. Not all of them made it to the water… don’t know why they developed leaks?

After the very first rapid smashing everyone giving me a nice poke in the ribs (that is still bruised) I was a little concerned about what we’d gotten ourselves into.  I also started to doubt the integrity of my vessel with it’s freshly caved in nose and it’s “Toyz” branding which I had only just noticed.

It turned out that the first one was one of the worst, with only a couple toward the end proving a little tricky, particularly the “Mowl hole” (so named from Mowli’s near death experience on our last outing) spitting out everyone but the Chimp and Lamby into an aquatic yard sale.

Best off has to go to Moorey with his involuntary underwater back flip, where after getting his boat jammed between two rocks he ended up sitting sideways on his submerged boat, skylarking and laughing until something shifted beneath him rolling his backward, the water then grabbed him and stuffed him down between the rocks and under his boat… he wasn’t laughing when he finally emerged several meters down stream.

Fortunately old mate boat hire wasn’t home when we dropped them off, a couple of them had their noses remodeled. Over the phone he asked us if we had fun on the lake… yeah lake, the “lake” was good.

Another awesome weekend, can’t wait to see some of the chimps on water footage!

The weekend before I flew back to Australia I took the Friday off and organised a chalet in the “Giants Castle Reserve” for Zett, Max and myself to spend a little quality time.

We also took the chance to kick off a bit of hike training for our Killi assent later in the year. Lucky for us Max seems to really like hanging around in the hike pack.

Yesterday we finally got around to putting up Max’s room decorations we painted last year. Wish I had something as cool as that on the walls when I was 0.5 years old!

Max turned the 0.5 a couple of days ago, yesterday morning I noticed a tiny pimple like hard bit on his bottom gum.  By this morning you could definitely feel that it was the front two bottom teeth starting to come through.

If you look really close (I’ve attached these at full res so you can get in close) you can just see the two little chompers coming through.

For Christmas this year we had all of Zett’s family together, Neels, Marge, Celeste, WP, Max, Zett & myself had a lovely luncheon here at our place.

Max is a little young to get right into the presents thing, preferring to suck on the colourful paper instead. He did smash down his first bowl of solid food like an old pro during our lunch. Later in the arvo we hit the pool, briefly because the pool is so damn cold still, Max got to try out his new boat and Zett tested out her new inflatable chair in preparation for her new role as homemaker.

All in all a nice and chilled Christmas.

Everyone else is having work Christmas parties left right and centre and with Max around at his Oumas, I figured it was time for the official Rivalea South Africa division office Christmas party!

Here’s some shot of Max hanging out with me and Zetty in the study this morning, he’s not that comfy on his belly yet but he’s getting better at it. Definitely a lot better at checking things out, we’re a little ways of crawling yet.

Back in Pretoria we decided to pop into Farm Inn (a local game farm/breeding facility), seeing Evan and Tan once again missed out on lions in the Kruger. They specialise in white lions and cheetahs, but has some other general game too.

Max got to play with his first baby white lion.

We didn’t get to pat the Cheetahs this time (unlike when Lamby and Sambo where here), they seem to be a little more commercial breeding oriented these days. It’s still always a nice little afternoon out.

After Coffee Bay we continued north towards Durban. We were heading to Margate. I went there 4 years in a row for the South African equivalent of Schoolies week and this stopover was intended as a trip down memory lane. We arrived at Margate around 5 pm. My memories of the place were absolutely shattered. What once was a simple car park for friendly beach goers turned into a taxi rank with hordes of people, rubbish and rubble. Although the view was still nice, a sense of security was a little lacking.

We high tailed out of there first thing in the morning and stopped in at Giba Gorge for a nice MTB ride. From there we headed to the Central Drakensberg. We set off on a “quick” hike, but got tempted to see the next waterfall. What was meant to be a quick stroll turned out to be a 4 hour hike with no supplies, a little baby, and a pregnant chick (who likes eating at regular intervals). We got rained on, had no carry pouch for Max, but still had fun. It is an awesome area.

Can I just add that after being together for 10 years and married for 3, this is Zett’s first post on BrownBot… lets hope there’s more to come.