Amazing wild weekend.

This weekend did not seem as busy, so we took some time off to go to the Lake Louisa Nature fest to learn about local wildlife and all things that are happening around Lake Louisa, conservation wise. We attended a great little seminar about bats and found out the thae speaker actually worked at the Umgeni Bird park for a while, and now he works at Animal Kingdom. The Veterinary director at Animal Kingdom is also a South African.

We also went for a casual paddle on Sunday and you would never guess what we saw when we returned to shore. As we were packing up Michi said to me "Hey come look at the Bobcat!" and I said ja, ja he always pulls my leg. But there it was not even scared of us about 5m away leisurely strolling into the woods. When Amelia eventually arrived to pick us up we could still see it waiting between the trees. There are locals that live all their life here that have never seen one, so we consider ourselves privileged.

Pizza fest

Today we did our part for charity as well as for publicity. We were part of the Pizza fest that showcases the pizzas from the area. This is where people could come, pay 5 dollars and taste all the different varieties from different restaurants. And as they say the proof is in the eating. We hope that people could taste the fresh taste versus the frozen bases.

We provided about 23 small Pizzas that were cut into 12 smaller pieces, and these only lasted 2 hours.

We also found this nice park that we still want to take the kids to. Very peaceful and clean.

Sunday at the beach

 One of Sven's birthday wishes was  to go and see the wild Manatees of Florida, but how do you go about this? There are two main areas of Manatee activity and one is in Tampa and the other in the Mosquito lagoon. So I goggled an area where the girls could lie on the beach by the sea and us boys could use the Kayak or fish from the side of the lagoon. I found such a place to be the Canaveral national seashore area just south of New Smyrna beach. We left early as this was about an one and half hour drive. When we got there at about 09h00 the beaches were still empty and the wind was pumping with a slight drizzle. This did not deter us and Michelle and Amelia went to the beach and the boys went to the lagoon to fish. We caught a couple of bream (Stompneuse) and suddenly the monster appeared right before us. It was a gentle giant of about 500kg, a real life Manatee. It actually just nonchalantly swam right under the jetty where we were standing. We all thought this was luck and could not believe it, but then another two appeared from nowhere to investigate us. Once they had left I saw another couple in the distance and sent Sven to get the girls. Just as they got there the next lot came to feed and investigate us at the jetty. This was just amazing with these gentle giants just 10 cm away all relaxed and investigating. Another "once in a lifetime" Bucket-list experience ticked off.