Advertisement
Published: August 2nd 2015
Edit Blog Post
This is it, our last entry for our summer holidays shared with Tiffany and Leslie. Not any entry however! We fly British Airways all the way from Cape Town to Durban, 2 hours flight to be back where it all nearly started. This time, we are staying in Umhlanga, on the outskirts of Durban...this place is also always my last stop after diving Shelly Beach and just making it back to home after my usual little trips to Congo.
As I told you already, in a near future, I'm moving to South Africa....to dive, play golf, cook and enjoy some amazing wines! But Tiffany will be moving first! As of middle of January 2016, she is moving to a great boarding school just a hundred kilometers from Durban. So our mission, for her birthday day, was to visit the school. Let me tell you, she truly enjoyed what she saw...and me too! She had to do her entry test in math and English, so Leslie and I went to play some golf. This will be some kind of a challenge for her. She is moving back to the South Hemisphere calendar! This time, I'm not making the same
mistake as with Argentina. Back in 2012, we moved at the end of the school year in Bangkok and the kids joined their new school in the middle of the school year in Buenos Aires. This was really not the best idea, so this time, she will go to school until Christmas holidays in Bangkok, and start a new school year middle of January in South Africa.
Great news, test went pretty smoothly, so she is jumping 6 months ahead this time. Tiffany has done some tremendous progress at school over the last 4 years since she joined me. Trust me, four years ago, we were nowhere! And now, with this move, she had the option of moving up 6 months, or moving down 6 months....and it seems she is more than ready to move up. This mean she should be entering University while she will be only 17....giving her many more options in the future, travelling around being one of them!
You may tell me, wow, South Africa, this is far away, why not England! Have you seen the weather in England, or taste the food...no way! We went through the all year
calendar of 2016 together with Tiffany...and on average, we will see each other every 2 to 3 weeks, with never a period of not seeing each other of more than 5 weeks...I'm not kidding! Isn't it a small world! So 2016 and 2017, before Leslie is going to University, shall be a little challenging on my calendar....one great news, we are going to dive a lot Protea Banks in Shelly Beach over the coming years!
To celebrate Tiffany birthday, and her admission to her new school, we went for a very nice dinner at the Oyser Box Hotel in Umhlanga! Great to share this place for once with the kids! Even if Tiffany is not really keen on the oysters...yet!
Next morning, Durban wanted to wish us goodbye with some rain...but not yet, we had one last adventure planned. It's winter time, and Ushaka Marine World is not open everyday...we should have done it for the birthday girl day...but it was close...so one day later would do it. We went to dive the Open Ocean Aquarium, also known as the rays aquarium. Diving in most aquarium in the world is seriously expensive, but here,
it's only 33usd per person, equipment including, for a 30 minutes dive...so on for the adventure.
Our divemaster understood pretty well that the kids know what they are doing, so he let us enjoy the tank in full freedom mode! Well, I now kind of understand the feeling a fish must have in an aquarium....even in a big one...going around all day long must be seriously depressing! But for 30 minutes, that was truly fun! They had tens of rays, plus two guitar sharks, and hips of pelagic fishes....some of them more than keen to hit me on regular basis! The best part, and most fun one, must have been the school kids on the other side of the window. First time I'm taking underwater pictures of school kids with huge smiles! Next time, I'm taking my Santa Clause outfit!
And this was it...I still had to drive all the way to Pretoria before catching our early lunch time flight back to Asia. I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of Joburg, and the Sheraton in Pretoria is cheap and takes care pretty well of us, all this for just driving few
more minutes than I should have in the first place.
The kids have been in Vietnam for the last week...main, or should I write only activity for them, they seem to spend some serious time in front of their computer. Sadly, not sure there is much organized there for them! I love what Leslie told me on the drive to Pretoria. "Papa, I have the feeling we've done so much the last 3 weeks, that it is like if we were going back to school in 2 days, thank you Papa". Well, you know by now, they should remember this month of July for years to come! And this is only the appetizer for what is coming in! On my side, few more blogs to come, few more discoveries, the kids are only back to school on the 24th of August!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.087s; Tpl: 0.03s; cc: 14; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0438s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
They grow up so fast...
glad to see you have made excellent preparations.