Macau - A nature walk

Got up early on Sunday morning (was forced to by the painful bed), took a taxi to Coloane village. This was very sleepy on a Sunday morning - a few people sitting out, a few walking to church. We went to Lord Stow's Bakery, fuelled up on croissants and a muffin, which we ate in the square before walking round the village, and then up some steps behind the A-Ma temple and on a long walk in the baking heat and bright sunshine.
One of the first things we saw was this squashed frog: nicely preserved for us, not so nice, one imagines, for the frog.

We walked for what felt like an interminable time, ever upwards, sweating away, stopping occasionally to see a rather large spider or butterfly, before finally walking down to Cheoc Van beach, where there was the promise of cold drinks at the Gondola. Which funnily enough, was shut at 10.30 in the morning.

Never mind, we got ice creams a bit further along, and when I started walking again, I thought that I would die. We passed by some people readying themselves for a hash run, again, amazed that people would exercise in this heat, and then walked up another hill from Cheoc Van, along a monstrous, apparently unpopulated pink-tiled holiday complex, before finally finding a trail to Sac Ha.

Arriving at Fernando's just before 12, I was taken aback at the crowd already pressing at the locked doors - like a zombie horde obsessed with codfish. Despite Fernando's fearsome reputation for long waits, we were seated, fed, and out again by 12:30, and happily took an arriving taxi back to our hotel in Taipa to pick up our luggage.
Or rather, I went in to get the bag, and the taxi drove off, with Jennifer not understanding for a few minutes that I was being left behind. Eventually they returned to see the bedraggled me outside the hotel, and then we were driven to the Venetian. When we wanted to go to the MGM. More taxi-based hilarity ensued.
Finally we got to the MGM (it's full of pandas at the moment and there's a suspicious photo of me pinching the arse of one that you're not going to see here) and had dessert - crepes suzette for me, flambee'd at the table. Caught up with a friend who's working at the Wynn, then tried to get a taxi back to the ferry. Once again, utter frustration, exarcebated by the three taxi drivers who, one by one, pulled up fifty yards from the taxi rank and then didn't move, perhaps figuring that they didn't really want to drive people around. When we did get a taxi (after waving down another who put his not-for-hire flag up as soon as I got in) he drove us to the wrong ferry terminal first, so by the time we got back to the Cotai ferry we were a little out of shape.
All this stress was relieved when a woman tried to barge past Jennifer in the Customs queue - she rebuked her in Cantonese, which meant for the next twenty minutes we had the baleful stare of this woman - if looks could kill I'd be dead, but as it was I couldn't help but crack up every time I saw her. Nothing like angry people to make you more content.
Usual scrum on the way back out of the Hong Kong ferry terminal. Elbows up and pushing like a mad one, we got to the taxi queue and back home with just enough time to post some photos online, before we had to skedaddle out to the Academy of Performing Arts to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company - magnificent.
Then a mad dash to Pacific Place to catch The Proposal, and home to bed. What a day.