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Published: September 21st 2007
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On the beach
Our guest house in Durban ***I know, I know. I am already home- back in beautiful Canada, but I promised myself I would finish this blog even if it is from the comfort of home. I apologize that this is not authentically written from Africa, but at least I wont leave you without the ending of my trip. 😊 ***
We left St. Lucia early in the morning and headed south down the coast to Durban. Durban is a beautiful coastal port town with quite the Latin and Indian flare. Durban has a large population of Indian citizens who are very proud of their culture and have established some amazing spice and goods markets.
We arrived at our guest house "On the Beach" just before noon and scrambled for some lunch before our guest house operator sent us off to the Indian Market (now known as the Victoria Market) and the water front. Unfortunately the market was all but deserted as it was Sunday afternoon and most everything is closed on Sundays. The second unfortunate thing was that we let our cabs leave before we checked out the scene, so we had to wait about an hour for new cabs to arrive to take
us to the water front.
Once at the waterfront we headed straight for some shopping. The stores and galleries at the Sharku waterfront were pretty awesome. We checked out a gallery that was showing paintings created by Nelson Mandela; there was one beautiful print of handprints with Nelson Mandela's's handprint in the centre. If I had enough money I would have happily bought it, instead I found 3 colourful small canvas paintings of Zulu women that would look great in my entry. 😊
That night we all headed to Joe Cool's restaurant and bar for our good-bye dinner for Michelle as she was heading back to England the next morning. We had a great time dancing in our seats at the table and then after a beer or 4 we all headed on to the dance floor. We managed to get Stephen and Cassidy up for a dance or two, which is a bigger feat than one may think. Cassidy was kind enough to teach us a new dance- "Texting in Africa". I swear that boy doesn't leave his phone alone for more than a minute. It was hilarious!
After dinner and dancing we ended up enjoying
yet another beer or 2 on the patio at the guest house. Michelle was kind enough to retell her South African Lion story (a tale for another time) and teach us her "stop the bus I have to wee wee..." song. Man are we gonna miss her!
After promising to have after Furry-thing spotting beverages in her honour I headed off to bed.
In the morning we posed for sentimental tacky group photos in front of Stevie the bus. Said our good-byes to Michelle and hit the road for the Draksenburg Mountains.
After about 10 hours of driving, we came to a small town on the foothills of the Draksenburgs to pick up our guide Robert. From the town we drove for another 2 hours through barely populated hillsides. The area we were headed to is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the Draksenburg peaks and random goat/cattle herders. The electricity doesn't even make it out this far. There are electrical lines that are in good repair and run for some time until the wires all snap and the poles begin to fall by the roadside.
At around 4:30 we pulled into Malekalonyane Lodge where we
are staying for 2 nights. Thankfully we are not staying in tents as it is absolutely freezing! (In comparison to the 25 degree weather we are used to) We are put up in Roundawels (pronounced Round-a-vel) which is a round built house with thatched roof. There were 7 of us to a roundawel, kind of cozy but helps heat the place. Since there is no electricity the hut is lit by paraffin lamps, which cast a pretty decent light surprisingly.
That night we enjoyed dinner in the main house by lamp light and were even treated to champagne by Laurie and Don. They are a great couple from Winnipeg who came on this trip as part of their 30th anniversary celebration. It was quite the treat to be included in their special day!
After all the celebrations Cassidy told us that there was some sort of lunar effect happening tonight at around 12:30 and that there would be 2 moons. So I decided that since we are in the perfect place to watch the stars and perhaps see this Lunar thing I would set my alarm and get up and see what we could see. So at 12:30
Twinkle twinkle
moon and stars- There was supposed to be some lunar effect that night... two moons... I didnt see two moons so I snaped a long exposure pict. of the moon the beams and the stars Marnie and I headed out into the cold night and took a shot at seeing 2 moons. The night was very bright as it was a full moon but we couldn't figure out this 2 moon thing for the life of us. We decided that Cassidy was playing a joke on us as there was nothing that looked remotely like 2 moons at all. I tried to grab a couple photos of the stars and moon and after about a half hour of freezing ourselves we went to bed.
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