Durban: bright lights, late nights and lots and lots of football

After the trauma that was The Saga of Sam's Phone bill, we had to rearrange our holiday plans a bit, eventually deciding on a long weekend in Durban and two weeks on the Port St John’s-Coffee Bay hiking trail. Somehow we ended up spending a week um-ing and err-ing as to whether to go to Cape Town instead but didn't and eventually [can't remember how] we signed on for a week in Durban.







And so it came to be that Liz, Sam and I were on the road to East London where we would pick up Liz's friend also named Sam, spend the night and then embark upon the long road trip up to Durbs. It was a mildly traumatic road trip because Liz's car was imminently about to fall apart after she had an epic crash whilst returning from the leave [thankfully only the car was harmed:)] but aside from some interesting noises there was no trouble. There were a large number of people who took it upon themselves to point out the large sheet of metal hanging off of the front of the car [as if we didn't know] so I'm sure if things had got worse and the car had broken into a few pieces, one of those many good Samaritans would have stopped to help. [Or would have stolen the car parts, you never know with the Transkei.]







We subjected Liz to some of our highly entertaining car games until we finally arrived in East London at her friend Lara's house [turns out we had actually met before] where we were going to stay for the night. We went all went out for a Chinese which was good times, especially when they got out the jasmine tea and for some reason we ended up having some rather questionable conversations :)







The next morning we got up early and got on the road to start the 7+ hour drive to Durban which I won't bore you with details with. About nine hours later [2nd longest road trip of my life I think] we were there in the BIG city – it was very strange to see skyscrapers again after months and months of rondavels. The first task was finding out where our backpackers was which is somewhat of a mission as the powers that be [in their infinite, no wait, non-existent, wisdom] have changed all the street names in the city without producing any updated maps and with the only stipulation being that the new name has at least 15 unpronounceable syllables. We were looking for the corner of Prince Alfred and Pine Street which is now known as Monty Naiker and Florence Nzama [okay, so those two are reasonably pronounceable] so after a few wrong turns and sitting in some traffic for a while, Sam and Liz dropped us off and we were alone in Durban.







From the outside, Banana backpackers looked, shall we say, unpromising. We didn't have any other choice as I'd spent an evening the previous week phoning every place in the Coast to Coast and this was the only one with space available [probably should have been a sign]. It was quite a bizarre place – some kind of converted block of flats with a central courtyard and a random blow up paddling pool in the middle with some algae floating ceremoniously in the middle. To be honest it was fine for what we needed but did not have the same vibes as Mdumbi/Bulungula etc :)







Contrary to Liz's single piece of advice which was not to walk around after dark w spent the first evening exploring and wandering around the massive FIFA fan park that had been built for the world cup. We did consult with this random old English guy in the backpackers who assured us that it was safe so decided we would risk it and it actually turned out fine because there were so many other tourists in town for the football. When we eventually returned to Banana backpackers we realised that we had some absolutely stunning neighbours on the ground floor in a rather dodgy looking 'massage parlour' that was definitely selling more than massages... It was going to be a good week!

The FIFA Fan Park

I won't bore you with a day by day run down of what we did all week but there were some memorable moments:



We went on an EXTREMELY cool tour of Durban on a tour bus with all the German tourists and older couples which mainly consisted of an eccentric tour guide reading the road signs to us. I think the best bit was when we went past an Indian restaurant and she read out its advertising board to us.



Watching the South Africa vs. France game in the fan park was amazing – it was completely packed out, must have been around 10000 people there. Bafana Bafana were playing so well and when they scored the place exploded and everyone was cheering, waving South Africa flags, jumping up and down, just going crazy. For a moment I think everyone believed that we would make it through against all the odds but in the end it wasn't meant to be and the host nation got kicked out of the tournament :(

During Bafana's 2-1 defeat of France

Continuing our cinema tradition, we went to see three movies: Letters to Juliet, Death at a Funeral and Schuks Tshabalala's Survival Guide to South Africa. The first two were pretty mediocre [especially Letters to Juliet which bordered on creepy with quotes like 'the greatest pleasure in life is having someone else brush your hair] but the Survival Guide to South Africa was BRILLIANT. It was like a less controversial version of Borat set in South Africa: the guy went round the country setting people up in various ways with some hilarious results that we could actually properly appreciate having lived here an experienced the culture. The best bit was probably when they had a stand at a football stadium and were 'testing' the vuvuzelas to see if they made too much noise. They then cut the vuvuzelas in half so they make a stupid noise and the people went SO mad and got angry and started hitting the 'tester' – shows how crazy some people are! I think you have to see it to appreciate it, but it’s by far the best film I've seen in the cinema here :)



On the Tuesday night we saw a sign up in the backpackers offering tickets for one of the Durban matches so the next day we enquired and ended up getting Nigeria vs. Korea tickets worth $160 for only R300. We were so excited for the match [despite the rather obscure nature of the teams involved] and went to get out faces painted with the country flags. Lots of people were backing Nigeria because the general feeling after South Africa went out was to support any of the African teams left in the competition and I ended up with a Nigeria flag on my face in what I'm sure was actually just wall paint... Anyway, we walked the couple of miles to the stadium which is an absolutely stunning building and made our way inside in record time [the organising of the whole thing was surprisingly efficient!]. As you walk up into the stadium you get this amazing view of the pitch and all the stands and it was so bright and loud that you couldn't help but be impressed. Everyone was so hyped up for the match and you could barely hear anything for the sound of the vuvuzelas echoing in the air. We briefly met up with Liz, Sam and Liz's sister Helen before heading to our seats which were amazing [but then for $160 you should expect that I guess!]. The atmosphere was absolutely electric once you were in the stands and continued throughout the game. The match itself was one of the better ones I'd seen in the world cup with plenty of goals and drama on the pitch. At one point one of the players had to be epically stretchered off writhing in pain but then two seconds later was sprinting around the pitch which is a testament to how dramatic some of these players are! In the end it was a draw, with Korea going through on goal difference. I'd say it was one of the best experiences of our trip so far :)

Sam and I at the match

There are two ice cream places on the beach front, Milky Lane and Waffle Express. After going to Milky Lane for the first few days we decided we would try out the other one to see how it compared. The weird thing was that the menu was the EXACT same as for Milky Lane [which was next door] but had a different logo at the top. Sam ordered a fruit smoothie and I ordered a chocolate milkshake which [as you'd expect] were depicted in the menu as a bright coloured fruit drink and a light brown milky drink. However, when our waiter [who we reckon didn't even actually work there] went to make it he decided to take two ice cream sundae glasses, fill them both with ice cream and then pour fruit sauce on one and chocolate sauce on the other, and then to top it off, mixed it around at the top with his finger! So we were rather unimpressed when he turned up with two large glasses of vanilla ice cream with finger marks in the top. We pointedly looked from the picture in the menu to the hideous creation in front of us trying to work out the correlation but he ran away before we could protest. Deciding to just go along with it, we tried them, only to find that they tasted like cold milk with dust in it [or, as the day went on and the story got exaggerated more, we decided it was like atomic bomb dust with weed killer in it...]. They were really horrible, and given that usually the two of us will eat anything, we decided we'd tell our suspicious looking waiter that there was something wrong cue this conversation:



Sam: Excuse me, there's something wrong with our order.



Waiter: What is wrong?



Sam: Well it's just that it tastes like dust.



Waiter: Dust? What?



Sam: Taste it! It's like dust, it's horrible.



Waiter: *sticks his finger in [again] then decides against tasting it* I'll make you another one.



And at this point Sam and I ran away back to Milky Lane...



We went to Ushaka Marine World for the day which has a giant aquarium, dolphin shows, Zulu dancing etc. It was a good day: watching some crayfish have a fight, seeing the most bizarre dolphin show ever which had a random cross-dressing man creeping around in the background, spending a long time in a weird shop that sold novelty phones...the usual. At the end of the day we went to this restaurant which looked really nice but was quite full so they had to squeeze us in a random table at the back. The waitress then bought us a giant wine list made of metal [which should have been a clue] and the menus only for us to discover that if we were to eat there on our budget we would be having a slice of garlic bread and a glass of water between us. Not wanting to face the waitress and confess our mistake, we tried to think of an excuse but ended up grabbing all our things and running out the back door, not stopping until we had completely left Ushaka Marine World and were halfway along the beach. Does it get any classier?



Sam and I were sitting on the balcony outside our room watching the world go by [and by the world, we mean a whole load of dodgy people who were frequenting the 'massage' parlour below]. This one woman was wandering up and down trying to pick people up in their cars and we found it so surreal to be watching this that we started laughing. Unfortunately for us, the woman must have heard and started yelling abuse up at us in broken English, telling us to mind our own business and I'm sure other things that were less polite. We genuinely thought she was going to come up and kill us but eventually she gave up and went away down a backstreet...how stunning.



We went to Victoria Market which is full of shops selling traditional 'African' things and loads of Indian shops selling spices, all brightly coloured and piled up in giant bowls. The first shop we went in was one of the spice shops and before we even set foot in it we were accosted by a tiny Indian woman who turned out to be one of the world's greatest [and most persistent] saleswomen. She was chatting away to us about the spices and how English people usually like such and such and how this one is spicy so you can give it to your mother in law etc and as we started to back away in a bewildered manner picked up a pot of curry powder and started explaining its benefits. When she finished with all its culinary uses, she started on about '...and it's in a tough plastic pot which is useful for transporting it around so it won't break' and at about that time we made our excuses and left before we ended up buying random things out of fear that she would kill us. The next guy we went to, however, also had a brilliant selling technique as when we asked what something was he let us try it, and when we said we wanted three of something he just threw about ten in the bag and didn't let us argue. Gooooood times!



I went to the post office and on the way there was accosted by two young guys who said they wanted to marry me and would play 83 cows for the privilege [which is an ENORMOUS amount]. When I refused that, he said he owned a giant fleet of taxis in Jo'burg and Durban and would build me a beautiful house in St Lucia and I was just starting to think I might go along with it when he asked if I supported Brazil or Portugal. When I said Portugal, then ran off as fast as they could so that was the end of that...







So after a week of fun and games, running out of two restaurants and watching almost every single football game on the giant fan park screen, we were all Durbaned out. Liz came and picked us up and took us back to her home in Hilton and we stayed there for the night :) We spent the night watching Ghana's epic win over the USA and then were introduced to the legendary Glee [which we are now hooked on] before heading off the next day on the long long long drive home.







After seven more hours on the road during which Liz, Sam and I came up with 101 uses for Watchtower magazine [it was a long trip okay?] we arrived back home in the Transkei. Lisa had driven out from Zithulele to meet us part way along the road so we did a car swap and after a traumatic final 20kms [including Lisa successfully rally driving through the mud and Liz informing us that we couldn't actually return to our own house for another two weeks as someone else had moved in] we were finally back home.







So I guess all that remains is a MASSIVE thank you to Sam for driving us all that way and to Liz for letting us come and letting us sleep at her house and also to Lisa for coming to pick us up [and not driving off a cliff in the process ;)]







xxxxx