With the James’ in Wales and the Jones’ up in Darwin we were looking at a very quiet Christmas, so we figured we’d do something different.

Basically we headed out in mum and dad’s boat, the “Lunar lander” with our seafood lunch and plenty of drinks to find a nice spot and have a little fish.

The wine and food was as good as ever, particularly nice in a nice shady spot on the river. The strangest thing was how good the fishing was, we were reeling in cod hand over fist, the grand total at the end of the day was 9, with one keeper out of the lot.

We ran into Nigga and Mowli on the way back in and ended up partying back and Kristy and Richie’s later on, it was an awesome day all up!

We spent the last week our South Africa trip up in Barra Lodge in Mozambique, we arrived the night before Ev’s and Tan so we had nothing to do but kick back by the pool and sip on a few quiet ones.

The next day after Ev’s and Tan had rolled up we went on an ocean safari to snorkel with the wale sharks, basically they take you out in a large Zodic all suited up ready to go and cruise around along the coast line till you see a shark, they then stop the boat a fair bit in front the shark and everyone flop off the boat then scrambles over the top of each other trying to see the shark.

We actually managed to see the first one awesome, it balked at the mob of spastic snorkellers and swam around in a circle then took off to the side, we were lucky enough to preempt where it was heading and position ourselves to swim along side it, it was amazing to watch, it was hardly moving and we had to swim our arses off just to keep up. This was Tan’s first snorkelling experience, awesome stuff.

Zett and I did a scuba dive later in the arvo, nothing too noteworthy it was really just to reacquaint ourselves with diving ready for the deep dive out to Manta Reef to see the Manta Rays.

We had a day to kill in between so we paid some guys to drive us around the local town Inhambane, we checked out the port, a flea market and a really dodgie museum, I picked up a dodgie pirated CD at the market “Moz Songs 2007″ and got our drivers to play it for us while we drove around, couple that with a couple of the coldest Mozambican beers we had all trip and we were cruising in style… in a clapped out bongo van.

In between there was plenty of taking it easy by the pool… it was friggin hot the whole time!

Another day we hired some quad bikes and got a guided tour around the local villages, there didn’t seem to be any road structure through most of them, just random grass huts dotted through the palm trees, the kids were happy to see us they’d run to the sides of the tracks and give you high fives as you road past, poor ole Tan riding at the back even got boarded a couple of times and had to accelerate till the jumped off.

Our room was quite luxurious, no AC of course but we did at least have a fan… Ev’s and Tan didn’t quite have the same experience staying in the bunk house.

That row boat wasn’t just washed up on the beach, the locals row them out through the surf to go fishing, we passed them way out to sea on our way to the dive spots.

The other boat is what they took us out in, and the rusty ole Toyota was used to cart you back up the beach to the dive centre. We did eventually go for the dive at Manta Reef and it was absolutely spectacular!  Giant 4 to 5 metre wing span mantas circling over head, not to mention the massive schools of fish (literally a cloud of fish), heaps of huge Moray eels, Potato bass, right up there with the best dives we’ve done.

Last but not least some locals refuelling our plane out of 44 gallon drums they wheeled out on bag trolleys, no fancy motorized pump either… hand pump only!

We had a great little trip, after the chaos of the wedding, catching up with everyone and packing in with the James’ it was great to kick back and have a holiday, looking forward to more of there little Africa adventures when we’re over there.

Of course the main reason we were in South Africa was to be part of Celeste and WP’s wedding, here are a selection of photos from the night. The Venue was stunning and everyone looked great, it turned into a huge night with some dancing and quite a big session at the bar.

Here are a few of my shots of the Kruger park, I’m pretty happy with the shots I can get out of my old Fiji S5500. The most notable shots are the big old bull elephant with the broken tusk and the hippo’s out of the water.