Peppermint Bay Cruise

Whilst I was reaquainting myself with my blogger account I found this post, photos uploaded but no words, so I thought I'd fix it up for you all.

When I was in Hobart over Summer (winter) Rach and I headed off on the Peppermint Bay Cruise, a half day boat trip down the Derwent to the lovely Peppermint Bay Restaurant. We had driven 'the coast road' down through the little known but booming metropolis of Tinderbox a few weeks before, so it was interesting to see it all from the water.

Here is our vessel... We had lunch on board, Rach wasn't sure about the Tasmanian Salmon or oyster.

And here is Rach at Pepperment Bay, where we sampled their bubbly... Although sampled is probably not an appropriate word!

We saw Eagles, a fur seal and a sea lion chomping on a stingray (photos not so good sorry). The cruise was well worth the time.

When we were back on dry land we took this photo op, the Aurora Australis travels to Antarctica each year from Tasmania. It's winter when I go home so it's always docked down at the waterfront, but it will return to sea once enough of the ice had melted.

And here is our Knight in shining orange fluro, come to save us from ourselves!

Al Ain

Zadok's new company has recently given all their managers a two day weekend every second weekend, as apposed to every third weekend. This makes a huge difference to our leisure time and we are really enjoying it. The Other Weekend (you know what I mean....) we decided to head to Al Ain, a city in the Emirate Abu Dhabi. Al Ain is about 130kms inland from Dubai, it is famed for cool temperatures in summer due to it's high altitude and having the UAE's second tallest mountain, often mistaken as the tallest (the tallest is Jebal Yibir in the Hajar Mountains, at 1527 meters.)

Zadok loves animals and Dubai has only an extremely embarassing zoo that we have never been to.... The zoo at Al ain however was a very pleasant suprise! Maybe not world standard but large enclosures and very active animals.

Zadok looking at the Mere cats, and the Mere cats lookin back, thats what they do!

Mixed African exhibit, giraffes, zebras and other things against the stunning back drop of the Hajar Mountains.

This ape looked like he belonged in prehistoric times. The sign said 'Greater Ape' but I cant find it on the web. Any ideas anyone?

This was my favourite shot of the day. Neither the little boy nor the lion seemed fazed by their close proximity to each other!

There were lots of other animals and we thought it was well worth the drive and the 10 dhs (AUD 3!) entry fee.

After a few hours at the zoo we drove off up the mountain. There are hot springs round the bottom, you can see the suprising amount of grass down the bottom, known as Green Mubazarrah.

The road up is excellent and siad to be one of the great driving roads in the world, I dont think I did it justice!

The view was really good, the weather freezing... (everything's relative).

It was a thouroughly enjoyable day out, we dont get to do a lot of sightseeing usually! Highly recommended if you haven't ventured to Al Ain yet.