My first African stream trout

To continue my birthday weekend...we went strawberry picking and I made a great strawberry crumble--amongst many other really awesome things. We were so excited to have an oven that we never went out to eat other than our picnic. I think we both agree the best dessert I baked were these chocolate peanutbutter cheesecake bars. They were insane. You can find the recipe at: http://www.jamieoliver.com/foodwise/article-view.php?id=3054

Seriously for any bakers out there, this is a keeper. But definitely one to share. It makes a lot of brownies and they are really rich. Oh and check out the flips flops that I am showing off in the first picture. Matt got me those for my birthday. They are the coolest flip flops I've ever had. BUt I guess when you normally get your flip flops at Walgreens, you can only take steps up.

I got to go out on the South African streams for the first time with Matt. He has been multiple times with other fishermen and he has started doing some guiding, but I have only been able to go out on the dams since we haven't had a car. Thank god for the car back. I am learning a lot and I improve every time I have a rod in my hands. THis stream was great and if Matt wasn't teaching me, he probably would have caught a millions fish. He still caught a handful and I caught one, seen in my pictures. He was so proud he was beaming...Matt, not the fish. Matt saw the fish and I casted to it and caught it on the first try. I had a couple of other bites, but I get pretty excited when I feel them, so sometimes I don't set the hook right. BUt I am getting better and my other birthday present from Matt was a pair of wading boots. THank god, because I was slipping and sliding all over that stream. Matt is telling me that I have to walk slowly and quietly through the stream and I feel like a toddler because I can't stay on my feet. So soon my wading boots will be coming in the mail.

Butterfly World

Matt was really sweet and dedicated our whole weekend at the winemakers house as my "birthday weekend." I have not put that much focus on my birthday since I was a kid, and it was a lot of fun. In fact, it's probably the first time a long time I haven't been in the hospital on my birthday. Anyways, we got word of this place called Butterfly World and we figured that it would either be awesome, or kind of a joke. Well, it was awesome. There were hundreds of butterflies all over the place and all different colors. There were a couple with bright blue wings, but they were quite elusive and we couldn't catch a photo of them. My favorite part was the wall of cocoons. They had a wall with about 500 cocoons on it and they were all in different stages. Some of them were totally closed, but wiggling and wiggling and wiggling like something was just getting ready to pop out. And some of them had butterflies that had just emerged and were drying there wings. One of the photos is of a red and black butterfly that has just emerged. It was really amazing. My favorite butterfly was the one with the clear wings. The second picture. When they flew, they looked like dragonflies.

After lunch and the epic bike ride, we stopped by for a bit of work, errr fishing. Megan hooked into some real monsters and at one point I had 2 of these beasts on at once. No troots, but Megan shouldn't have to wait long for her first African trout, we are fishing a stream on tuesday.

We came across this fella this morning. there is something wrong with his head, maybe he got attacked and dropped or something. but he seems mostly fine now, just a bit ugly, but he was in the open near some crows so i brought him home to the orchard here to have some recuperation time. hes pretty.

Its a chameleon.

The end

I got my surfboard...

I also now have a wetsuit so i can ride in cold water and a car to get me and the board to the water.

Speaking of cars... check out the awesome car we were given as a courtesy car for a couple days. And if Megan didn't get super pissed, we wouldn't have even had that. This is a funny place.

This is now Megan's Birthday weekend bash and we are pulling out all the stops. We had a picnic in the forest at one of the vineyards called Vergelegen. It was awesome, all tucked back in the woods with gourmet foods. The bike ride there was down and enormous hill, which of course meant the bike ride home was really fun.

We also stopped at the farmers market and got some butter, a free range chicken, some amazing cheese, a mix of wild mushrooms, eggs, and awesome loaf of bread and some chocolate. it was a fun market and we hardly scratched the surface.