In Onrus

After we left Cape Town we drove to Onrus along the scenic route.

On the Onrus beach

Our time in Onrus was spent going to the beach, lazing around at the house, going to Hermanus for shopping (pre-Christmas mostly), coffee, and sometimes ice cream...

Neil seems to like ice cream

 Usefully, Neil liked this little playpen, so spent lots of time amusing himself in it:

In Onrus at the tiny church

Swimming was always pleasant with water temperatures around 18 degrees at least.

At Grotto Beach in Hermanus

On one day we went to the Space Agency in Hermanus where they mostly keep track of solar activity and its effects on the earth. They have an educational room with more general science exhibition aimed at children.

Miekie didn't like such a projection of herself so refused to be photographed

One of Neil's newly discovered great pleasures in life is flushing toilets...

Marisa and I bought a painting in Hermanus by Louis Ströh van der Walt which we immediately liked when we saw it:

Besides Marisa's parents, our time in Onrus overlapped with Hannes and family and Paul and family.

Presents!

Pieter wearing his new hat

Matching brothers

The kiddies table on the 25th

One of Pieter's presents was a robot kit. He and I built some of them. Here he is explaining how the infrared-triggered one works (this was taken close to the kitchen while the blender was in use, so sorry about the background noise):

We had mostly excellent weather, with only some evenings getting a little chilly.

On one of our walks

At a late lunch at The Tasting Room in Stanford

Here are some more photos taken during our time in Onrus and surrounding areas:

Neil speeding around in the lagoon

An odd ornament in Oskar's in Hermanus; subtle reflections like those here add some extra stereographic texture

New Year's eve

Miekie and I at the beach at around midnight on 31 December

We awoke on the first of January to the sounds of a helicopter coming and going and when we walked down to the lagoon we saw that it kept returning to collect water which it then dumped on the mountain which was burning. It was nice to see how effective this was in stopping the fire.

Burning the remaining sparklers on the evening of 1 January

Miekie, Pieter and I drove back home on 2 January and fetched Marisa and Neil at the airport on 3 January. On the drive Miekie and Pieter were again very well behaved, playing on their tablets. I had a wifi network set up in the car so they could play against each other. I spent most of the drive listening to a narrated book that I'd bought for the trip.

At the airport

This video was auto-created by Google Photos and I think shows a nice set of highlights of our holiday: