Caju Afrique Durban

... doesn't really inspire a walk on the beach. I think most of us with be napping this afternoon, since we had to be up early this morning to leave St. Lucia at 6 am. Tonight, we'll have a final group dinner before 4 of us leave the tour. The other 10 are continuing on another leg of the trip with Gap Adventures to Cape Town, for which I gather a bunch of new folks are joining them.

... off, we were "serenaded" by the melodic sounds of hip hop wafting across the road. A young group of local lads were getting their groove on to a "song" that reminded me of "Who let the dogs out?" (to howl horribly at us) Still, I enjoyed watching the youths bop and wiggle their asses while the young ladies congregating nearby flirted with them.

I slept like I had been weighted down with cement by Tony Soprano.

... 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.

... about 65 km east of Cape Town) where we were surrounded by mountains on both sides. As we were descending down out of the mountains in Sir Lowry's Pass, we saw several very large baboons walking on the guardrails. Falling off the guardrail would have been a very long fall down the mountainside. On Wed. morning, the 13th, I really wanted to visit Robben Island as I didn't have the ...

... to get to the sea a few times a week - mostly early morning or evening when the sun allowed for more than 15mins before you burnt. Durbans sea is warm enough and safe enough to swim in (shark nets and lifeguards for protection), but still the currents and strength of the waves means it's more of an invigourating jumping about than 'proper' swimming. I think our best beach exercise came on the last day of the festival ... also Ali's ...

... 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 ...

You have to do something mad once in a while to keep you sane right?!? Mom and I joined Mrs Smith on a leisurely drive down to Durban to surprise Kathryn for her birthday. Kath knew that her mom was coming down but not that Mom and I would be joining her. We left early Tuesday morning and stopped off in Pietermaritzburg to pick up Kath on the way through to Durban. Kath and her mom were staying with Chris and Natz in Belito and Mom ...