Bayview Bed and Breakfast Durban

... in Durban is limited. Despite almost constant rain, I've enjoyed walking around the city a bit and visiting several small museums.

Tomorrow I'm heading up into the northern Drakensberg mountains, where I hope the weather will be good enough to hike and ride horseback over the next couple of days.

... able to get some amazing deals on baskets made of colored telephone wire, a craft form that I fell in love with the last time I was in South Africa. The prices were 8 to 9 times less than what was being charged for similar pieces in St. Lucia. Now I just have to figure out how to carry this stuff home.

Our hotel is right on the beachfront, but it's a gray, overcast day ...

... place to be seen.  Basically a boardwalk with cafes, bars, street performers and people offering carriage rides in crazy contraptions.  Our pizza came with such an excess of cheese you could literally feel your stomach clog with every bite.  No worries, a beer should fix that.  So we headed to a bar along the boardwalk and enjoyed people watching.  Never before have I seen so many people use beach showers.  Oliver's theory was because it's their one and ...

It's a national holiday today - Independence Day and today is our last day in Zambia. A silent sadness prevails. It has been so wonderful to be with the people, in particular with Kambani and Shirley Banda whom we admire and respect. They have sacrificed personal opportunity for working with the 300 people that God has given them to manage. And, they do a terrific job ...

South Africa is really... white. Durban is dangerous at night and there
is a huge mall. They have blackouts every day for two hours at two in
the afternoon, and even the malls shut down.

... security prison for leading political activists such as Nelson Mandela. Today, the island is a protected area, and the former prison is a museum. I was told by John and Melanie that the tour guides for the island are all ex-prisoners. I spent Thurs. and Fri. last week with the children in the Transition Home providing daily care. Here are two more of the children in the home awaiting ...

... with the festival bicycle tour finishing at a beach bar with a couple of bands, some sandwiches and an ocean of cocktails... peaked a bit early but what the heck ! During these early weeks we also relished the Indian cuisine (Durbans' speciality is called a 'Bunny Chow', half a white loaf of bread with the dough scooped out, re-filled with curry and the 'bob-tail' of dough placed back on top). By the time the hectic-ness of the ...

... to try the local speciality which was called Bunny Chow. This is a carved out loaf of bread stuffed full of curry which you just devoured with your hands - a novel concept but the meat they used was extremely bony which took away from it somewhat. However it was nice to have curry again. Leaving Durban we took the bus upto Pretoria ready to trek over into Mozambique to begin the next country of our travels and the place we were going to spend, Christmas, Carlie's birthday and New year.

... walked along the beach, checked out the one-stoplight town, avoided the unsafe areas just to the south of the hostel. Nice day at the beach, really. The next day, the surf came up and I spent about 3 hours watching surfers at the world-class Supertubes spot. Some amazing surfers there. It is a right pointbreak just off a rocky tidepool shore, and if you catch a solid wave at the top and negotiate well, you can ride for probably longer than a minute or something. Most people I ...

Sad to see my friends and I part company, we all went off on our separate directions, ( after a delicious breakfast of avacado, tomato, bread and mango, I might add!). They were making their way by car down the coast.. but as there was not enough space in the car with all our bags ( sniff sniff ), we vowed to meet up in Cape Town later on. I got my things together, and hopped on the bus taking me to ...