Ibis Lodge 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 ...

... Aah photographic bliss!

G.A.P. Tours had left us a packet of materials with all our maps, itinerary, hotel info and vouchers, so we were loaded down with intel. Mary had arranged for an Indian man (a friend of one of her colleagues at her college) to meet us at the hotel in order to deliver a delectable Durban dish called "Bunny Chow", which essentially is a small loaf of white bread hollowed out and then ...

... in the Indian section of town. I was interested to see that the street next to the market had been renamed Denis Hurley Avenue, in honor of the anti-apartheid Catholic archbishop that I had visited back in 1992. The Catholic cathedral was right across the street from the market.

The market was pretty organized, under a roof with established stalls and a good selection of curios to buy. We got a nice outfit for Sophia for R10 ($1.25), and she ...

... 6/7 hours there going from one end to the other. It was a quiet night back at the hostel it was pretty empty with only a few locals. The next day we went to USHAKA Marine World, an aquarium & water park & spent the day watching sharks & other sea creatures, a dolphin show & a swim in the water park. That night we treated ourselves to dinner, and then had a few drinks in a bar, where we got chatting to a guy who turned out to be an ex-drug runner!! It was ...

... So I was very surprised to see the change that the last couple of years have brought. For the first time since being away I made a point of visiting all the new places to hang out. Expecting to find a new shop or two, I was amazed to find that whole new towns have been built in the metro. When I was a bit younger journalists used to lament the slow progress being made on large projects. Their favourite was the new international airport - which was started in the ...

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.

... business district of Durban. The building was loop-holed during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, bore witness to both the South African Wars and the Bambatha Rebellion, and more recently acted as a recruitment centre and canteen during both World Wars. It was here that African men were given sanction to enter the city or were denied access and had to pay the mandatory Poll Tax. At the ...

... the service, they had breakfast sandwiches for sale, and most people stayed to fellowship with one another. Everyone whom I met was very friendly towards me. On Sunday afternoon, friends of Melanie and John's came over for a braai, or barbecue. The husband, Johann, is from the Netherlands, and the wife, Ursula, is from Austria. They have two young children as well. Johann and Ursula met and lived in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, for ...

... med att ta ut barnet, som inte var skadat men svart medtaget troligen pga att mamman forlorat mycket blod. Bebisen gick inte att radda, trots intensiva livraddningsforsok. En halvtimme senare var vi tvungna att ge upp hoppet oxa om kvinnan. Hon hade skador pa kroppspulsadern och hade bloett for mycket redan. Nar vi lade ner, tvattade oss och gick ut kom tararna. Vad hade hon gjort for ont? Det ar smaertsamt att tanka sig att nagon ...

We went to the uShaka Marine World in Durban with the ladies of the Margate Baptist Church. My cousin's mother paid for this but did not attend. Weather alternated between being coolish and needing sweater and jacket to hot and humid when the sun came out. Still, many of the Africans wear heavy sweaters and toques on their heads. The Marine World is run by the Zulu people, I think, in whose territory we are. It was, quite commercialized (tubing river, trained dolphins ...