Petla'S Place Durban

I'm spending 2 more nights in Durban with a nice couple I found on couchsurfing.org. Margaret is an environmental consultant working on transportation issues for the city of Durban, and Gavin is a professional clown. They've given me a private guest room and various rides around town, which is great because public ...

Well here I am again in Hillcrest. Spent the week, sorting through clothes to take down in to the valley to distribute amongst the orphans. They were distributed on Wednesday, it has been a variety of weather as well...really hot to quite cold......not sure why I am here early, but I learning to take each day as it comes...

... in a 'safe' area so we started walking quickly in the direction of city hall and thankfully found the Durban museum of natural science.
We killed a couple of hours at the museum and then went strolling in the direction of the tourist office, after a bit of panicked walking around we eventually found it. We booked a cultural walk for the next day and then asked for directions to where we could get a minibus taxi back out to the suburb where our hostel is. Outside we were ...

... LifeNets Southern Africa cares for people in South Africa and Zimbabwe. In South Africa we are doing about five scholarships. In Zimbabwe we are doing two projects related to water, goat-raising and habitat. All good things, all bound for success. After the meeting Andre fired up the grill. His back yard is interesting ...

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.

... We then hopped back into the car and headed for Cape Town. It rained the entire day until we crossed the mountains to descend into Cape Town. Cape Town lies on a small peninsula at the southern tip of Africa which juts into the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Town rests at the foot of Table Mountain. For four centuries, Table Mountain at 3,566 ft above sea level has been a welcome landmark ...

... they can't sponsor sports ... The guesthouse guard-dog, a rather initimidating looking, but ultimately dopey dog called 'Shadow' became something of an object of pathos ... he was friendly enough, it's just his fleas were more friendly. Over the weeks the cockroaches also became a hot topic; one room being so over-run they were chewing through his notebooks and clothes. But this was nothing compared to 'The Legend of the Gecko and the ...

I sprang out of bed at 7am, all refreshed from a good night sleep. There is only one important thing on the agenda today... Clean underwear. Its been a number of days since I ran out of clean clothes and things are starting to get a bit desperate. So I headed down the block to the laundry place recommended by the hostel owner. Within two hours, I was back to being my clean and tidy "urban boy" self. I even used fabric softener in my ...

... need to calm down a bit. Anyways, arrived in Durban and got a taxi to our hostel. It was highly recommended (Tekweni's). We arrived and were alked from the front of the house, through to the back, back in the side and out to the front side of the next house. Out we continued to the garden shed, or The Shag Shack as the lady called it due to the bed being broken. Lovely. We had our frist braii (BBQ) and it was great!! All night it poured with rain and we were freezing cold ...

... real and instantly our interactions with people changed. In Lesotho I found the people to be extremely friendly, helpful and kind despite extreme poverty. In Underburg we were met with paved roads, nice supermarkets, and lots of resentment. Although I wouldn't recommend it in the winter-time (now), Lesotho is a great country which i would say is a must see in Southern Africa. We took more mini-taxis from Underburg and eventually got to Durban yesterday in time to see ...