Dental Package Holiday

Right, I hate dentists as a rule - something about having sweet tooth and meeting the latter day Butcher of Cumberland in my childhood. So trips to the dentist are generally quite traumatic experiences. So it was with feet scraping along the ground style I dragged myself kicking and screamning to the dentist this week to have a bit of a checkup. We'll not go into the details here, it's not the best reading for you all. But to sum up i have a checkup and then booked myself in for a bit of a cleaning. So today was cleaning day. R210, about £14 got me the best 40 minute dental experience ever. Admittedly I did feel a bit like a horse having it's hoofs done but now i've got myself a bobby dazler clean smile. So this brings me to the point of this post. So dentist in the UK are expensive - so why not book yourself a holiday to Cape Town and combine it witha trip to the dentist. What you save in dental fees you can waste on fine wine and nice weather. The Dental Package Holiday is born.

A photo

I was digging through all the photographs i've taken since being here and found this set that i'd not done anything with. I intentionally took all the shots but forgot about them.

These are the huge trees i've mentioned before but you really get a feeling of how big they actually are in these shots. See, Nicky's very very tiny.

101

Room 101
101 Dalmations
Blog 101

"The future is wet. Summer was in April"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article2013348.ece

I think like a disoriented sparrow - I'm going to winter in South Africa.

TIA

I watched Blood Diamonds on the plane over here and a phrase stuck with me. TIA - This Is Africa.

So.. People running across highways
Completely useless internet
Cars with no lights

TIA - it explains everything.

New place to skate

I forgot to mention that on Saturday we were parking down at the waterfront and like a SAS trained sniper/meer cat cross I suddenly heard that unmistakable echoey sound of skaters in a multi story car park. Alas a waxed kerb, but look at this for a surface.. South African builders may not be the neatest but the polish on this concrete is something Tado Ando's polishers would be proud of.

Left of boulders Beach

Again back to boulders beach but this time not to see the penguins - more for the view.

Birthday day

I had to try my new board today - just to see if i was kidding myself about blaiming my equipment for my appalling surfing ability. Safe to say i'm still pretty bad but the good news is that the new board does seem to float a bit more so it was certainly a good move.

We then went out to Constantia for lunch and a walk in the huge Eucaliptus trees.



Taking a different route that we usually do we ended up in an area that looked like a bomb had gone off. For some reason they were clearing some of the biggest trees.



Check the size of these things.



Mmmmmmm machines..


We saw some huge birds of prey which we've not been able to figure out. Could be Black Eagles but we're not sure. Any budding Bill Oddies out there able to help?

I'm 28 now

Wooo hoooo...

Birthday Dinner

We went out for dinner tonight. Nicky booked the very swanky Riboville restaurant for a slap up do. It's one of the places we've not been but hav heard a lot about. It's in the old ABC Bank building circ 1893 across the road from our flat. They repeated that fact thet it was 7 years in restoration so I guess they're pretty pleased with themselves about it. And they should be, a lot of the original features remain and have been restored very well resulting in an awesome atmophere. The food was A1 and the wine very good. We got taken on a tour of the underground vaults which have now been converted into an extensive wine cellar - this they're also very proud of.

We didn't have to sumble far home either. This was taken from the flat window tonight..

We saved it for a rainy day

And hell did it rain. So we went to the aquarium which of the two aquariums i've been to ever was the best. The other was at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill so not much competition. I'm assured though that it's one of the best aquariums in the world.

New Board

I did a trade in and got mysekf a new surfboard today. The first one was pretty trashed when I got it for £30 and was pretty much a heap of crap. As I was warned it didn't really float and was exceptionally hard to ride as a result. My vanity meant that i still wanted a short board rather than a big foam learners board but something a little longer and thicker witha bit more float. Oh and something that wouldn't embed sharp bits of fibreglass in my hand at every point. So the new one was from the trade in shop who gave me R100 for my old board (£7.50) and sold me the new one for R1100 which isn't bad. So it's a Custom 6'9" Thruster shaped Justin Healy of Hout Bay. For a guy called Keith spelt badly - I bet that sucked having your name spelt wrong under fibreglass on a custom board.

Here's the stringer details.