The jungle

Maybe growing up on the oft brittle-dry high-veld causes this fascination, but I absolutely love the vegetation at this time of year here.  There is an unstoppable photosynthesis about it all - a carbon sucking green-bomb all around.

This is the bottom of our driveway at the moment.  Wonderful Chinese lion (from a guy who used to live here called Dragon Ho :-) guards a cascade down from the old grave-site; on the way up, a tunnel of light to heaven... or maybe more a case of the flow of Fung Shui - a final resting place looking out over the sea, with the mountain behind.

The light coming through the canopy makes it amazing.  I went through a patch of telling the kids cheap ghost stories which featured the grave-site as a prop... probably not my best bit of judgement, because they were a bit on edge for a while.

An amidst the downpours a few hours of ferocious sun, small creatures going absolutely wild... everything chomping and shagging and getting on with being a species.  Two of the Sheung Sze Wan cleaning team head past a green-bulging armco on the way down the hill.  Amazing, admirable work ethic always.

Fantastic, Jurassic-like visitors - the place is just heaving with life, but in small  packages.

Restart...Summer

I feel like life has been suspended in time - and somehow I  managed to disappear from myself.  So after a terribly long hiatus ... re-emergence.  In a new season.  The ferociously hot and humid and raging wet everything green and exploding just all-time raining season.

I went for a ride and swim yesterday - something else that has been suspended - and after grinding out the first part of the return, I went back to the beach to fetch my phone in a sealing bag and swam back out to the nets - it's such a weirdly unique place - deep green water - crystal clear, you can see the bottom when swimming, fish.

One of the morning regulars, the ballet of freestyle, heads past along the shark nets, a sprinkle of stardust along her arm.  And June is the month when they might be necessary.

Looking East along the nets, villages peeking out of the jungle and mist.

Clearwater Bay Beach 1, with its slightly over the top beach infrastructure, at the end of the gorge.  There are three hundred and something steps from the road down to the beach, and no parking lot on the road at that they lead from.  Only the determined, or those who know what a strange little jewel awaits make the journey.