Phuthu Stay Phut, Don't go!

Okay photos of our skiing trip as promised!

An Austrian friend of ours recommended a skiing village in Austria, called Ischgl – he said this was the place to go. As far as skiing villages go, it was quite a large village and there weren’t that many English tourists either so it seemed as though it was the local hot spot. It turned out to be a good choice!

After a good sleep, a cup of 5 Roses tea (which I hauled all the way from SA) and a hearty breakfast, we headed up in the Gondala.

We found some amazing powder.

Skiing in it brought out the giggle-monster in me. But this is not me. My technique is much smoother….obviously….

Shame Denz, is the powder to soft for you? Like I said, my technique is much smoother. Hee hee

At about 10.30am, you start to get hungry

At about 12.30pm, your stomach starts to stalk your liver and at that point you promptly get something to eat at a restaurant in the mountains.

At about 12.35pm you’ve smashed everything on your plate. See Exhibit A above.

Sometimes we were silly…

Or really energetic…

Or really silly…

And sometimes….surprise surprise, we were mature enough to organise ourselves for a self-timer shot. Hoorah!

The last day was a bit of a white out….which makes it very difficult to ski but terribly funny to watch.

When it was snowing, we sought shelter in our self-catering apartment where we loaded up with Milka Chocolate and Ritter. Lots of it.

Did you know that skiing is the only holiday where you can eat one Milka slab per day and drink one hot chocolate per day and actually lose weight? True.

On the odd occasion we hauled our granny-asses off to Apres-ski which was always entertaining. (our Austrian friend Pieter – in the middle)

All in all the holiday was….well, this photo says it all doesn’t it? Incredible.

Someone called me a snowflake the other day and I thought that was kinda cute, especially considering we’ve just spent a whole week in Austria, living, breathing and sometimes eating snow (more on that another time).

And especially because I discovered that this little snowflake is pregnant.

A pregnant little snowflake.

Yes, it’s still sinking in…

More photos and stories next week.

Every second week my husband and I subject ourselves to a sports massage from our friend Carla. It’s a painful process and the only luxury involved is the fact that it’s done in the comfort of our lounge. I wrote a post on the modus operandi of a sports massage therapist last year – you can read it here .

I’m almost confident enough to say that we’re veterans at handling the pain these days.

But my friend Gina, who came along for a first-time massage with Carla last week, didn’t share the same sentiment.  It was with a seemingly sadist approach (but obviously not) that I captured the facial expressions that go hand-in-hand with a deep tissue massage.

It starts off pretty casual – note the arms in a relaxed position, folded behind the head.

But then, once the warm-up is finished after about 1 minute, the arms move down and clutch the sides of the plinth indicating slight discomfort. It’s still tolerable at this point.

Then comes the clutching of the plinth and the Stage One Grimace, indicating moderate discomfort. Here, Gina has closed her eyes and is trying to make her way to her quiet place.

Unfortunately the journey to that quiet place is cut short by the quad-fist-entrenchment. That results in the  Stage Two Grimace you see above, indicating severe discomfort.

So now you can say that you’ve learnt all about the typical facial and body expressions exhibited during a classic sports massage.

How many people can say that?!

Our dear BossLady aka Louisa is not with us this week. No, she is not sick. Neither is she busy killing herself in some endurance race. She went skiing in Austria, can you believe it! And here we sit, ol’ Kerry and myself, giving it our all. We answer the phones and pretend that we are the account department, the advertising department and the “no, we do not sell wedding cupcakes”-department. Let the good times roll.

We hope the two of you have a (snow)ball over there! We miss the way only you can strut them Zumba moves all the way to the printer and back!

I think in pictures so I couldn’t help trying to imagine where they’re at and what it looks like. Take the journey with me:

This is St. Anton in Austria. They might be here.
Or not.

This is some dude starting off on a fairly decent
slope, nothing too extreme. May even be our
Jeremy. Arent you supposed to wear a helmet
or something??

This is probably Jeremy – what he wouldn’t do
for a good shot.

Watch this space for an update. Can’t wait to see the real pics!

By Elzet

….these energetic souls were at the start of the non-stop Dusi.(yes, the whole of traditional Dusi in 1 day!)

Getting up at 4.45am, making two flasks of 5 Roses and driving to Pietermaritzburg is energetic enough for us…

I got tired just watching. Sometimes it’s nice just watching..

It’s a long day out there.. but for the paddlers, the non-stop Dusi is all about the adventure…one I’ve yet to do…

Aaah! Underberg! It’s one of those places that are just so cute you wish it had cheeks to squeeze.

..Like this, but wait…it gets even cuter…

Aaaaaaaaaagggha. Told you.

This weekend, we heard there was good water in Underberg and so made the short journey there to go rafting with our friends Doug and Lexi.

You would never guess by looking at this picture but they are super chilled out people…

I must share this story with you: We get to the rapid “Black Murray” and my husband suggests that I should take pictures through the rapid whilst he paddles and steers the raft. Cool, I thought! So off we went..

Woo Hoo..Clearly here I just had to hold on.

..and then I felt steady enough to whip out the camera and take some pics….but…then..

….the raft started going a bit skew so I turned around to have some words with the captain only to find that he’d fallen off the raft. You can’t really see it here but my mouth is agasp – partly from surprise and partly from laughing hysterically.

My man is laughing too. But not as much.

I would have rescued him sooner but the next rapid was too close and alas there was no time – I had to paddle down the next rapid on my own…

…Whilst he swam. Hee hee. (you can just see his paddle sticking up).

Lexi and Doug thought is was hysterical too and subsequently maxed out the flash card for the camera