David, Grace, Sarah and Emma Bellis

Sunday started with our usual morning trip down to play in the local park. Here we are having a little snack break.

Then we took a taxi to the Central ferry piers, where we met Nick, Jessie, Louisa & Dawn. We took the fast ferry to Yung Shue Wan on Lamma Island. After liberal applications of sunscreen and anti-mozzie squares, we set off to walk across the island.

It was a warm day, which made the first part of the walk hot work for our visitors. (Note to self, remind future visitors to leave swap jeans for shorts on a walking day). There was lots of strange plants (eg banana trees) and bugs to see though, and as it's all pedestrian-only it makes a good change of pace from staying in the city.

Here we're cooling off with the help of some stream water, before the last climb to the highest point of the walk.

The highest point, but perhaps also the low point with hot-and-bothered the order of the day. We stopped here for lunch, where Nick's hearty cheese sandwiches helped make everything better.

The walk gets more shady after this, and is downhill too. Combine that with a stop for cold drinks, and by the time we reached Lo So Shing beach everyone's feeling perky again. (With the possible exception of Louisa, who looks in need of an urgent bio-break.)

Ah, that's better.

The beach is one of our favourites, as it rarely gets busy, and it feels a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong. That day there were several dead jellyfish washed up - the biggest one we saw is in the bottom left corner of this photo.

When we went paddling, we also found these little fish swimming in the shallows. (Hmm, on youtube the picture is too grainy to see them clearly - you had to be there!)

After some more playing in the sand, we went in for a proper swim, with Sasha having a great splash around. Nick and I swam out to the floating platform for a few minutes peace & quiet, then it was back to the beach and time for everyone to have a shower.

Ah, the best part of the day. All clean, fresh clothes on, and a cool drink.

From the beach, it's a short walk on to Sok Kwu Wan, the other main village on the island. It has lots of seafood restaurants, but we didn't stay to eat this time - something to look forward to on a future trip when the girls are older.

There was quite a crowd around the temple (you can just see it on the right of the photo), as there was a Chinese film crew taking some footage. We passed them and walked on to the little ferry (kai-do), which chugs its way across the channel to Aberdeen on Hong Kong island. I always enjoy it, and it ends up passing all the fishing boats in Aberdeen harbour. The girls were asleep by this time though, so something else to save for a future visit.

From there we popped the Jones in a taxi back to their hotel, and then caught one home ourselves.