September 24, 2009 - Durban

We woke up early to head to Zululand for the King Shaka Day celebration. Unfortunately we found out that it is just the holiday today, and not the big festival. The fest is on Saturday, but funny enough we caught the dutch couple there!! We spent some time learning about Shaka Zulu's life and visited his grave and the actual stone he was sitting on when he was murdered by his relatives.

We then had lunch at the at the nearby Blythedale beach.

We drove towards Durban and discovered the beautiful and posh Umhlanga area. We visited the Natal Shark Board (the organization that manages the shark nets along the Kwazulu-Natal coast) to watch a dissection but unfortunately, they were closed due to the holiday. We scheduled a boat ride with them later on.

On the way to Durban, we stopped at a toll where the guy was rushing us to pay ("No time to count, just give me the money!"). He then started making small talk ("Where are you from?"). As he was giving us the change back, he said "Ok brother, I take 5 rands from you". Everything happened so fast that we didn't realize he actually took the money from us after we drove away. Needless to say that Gen was pretty pissed off, even though it was less than a dollar, while Sami thought it was quite funny!

We then drove down to Durban looking for a place to stay. Mirella's place was Hippo Hide, but it was fully booked. Bad luck all day!! But luckily we found a place to stay downtown (Tekwini) despite the long weekend. Believe it or not, we bumped into the dutch couple again there too! We finally spoke to the guy, who jokingly asked if we were following them.

To end this disappointment-filled day on a high note, Gen begged to eat some peri-peri chicken at Nando's. As always, it did the trick and cheered her up!!

We then walked around the popular street here, Florida Drive, and had a drink at the Thunderroad rock diner - a gritty, less cheesy hard rock café.

September 23, 2009 - St Lucia Day 2

It was still a very rainy depressing day in St Lucia today. We bumped into Mirella in the reception and went for breakfast together at the Purple Hippo café.

We spent almost the entire day online trying to prepare the final pieces of Sami's lease transfer in Montreal, but the bonus was that he had a chance to catch up with some of his friends at SF Marketing via Skype (hey Erik and Kristina!).

We hung out at Illy café for lunch, and then Baboushka for drinks later on, where a kitten found a home on Sami's lap while monkeys ran around on the street. We wanted to go to the river, but decided against it for fear of bumping into aggressive hippos in the dark! Apparently it is quite common for them to freely roam the streets of St-Lucia at night.

We enjoyed a yummy free dinner at the bib's lodge and then hung out on the couches talking to the other backpackers. Also enjoyed a couple rounds of pool and foozball.

September 22, 2009 - St Lucia and ATM Woes

In the morning, we woke up in the cave to lots of nature's sounds and a hot fire preparing breakfast. With the daylight,we were finally able to see some of the cave paintings in the cave that were created by early residents hundreds of years ago.

We opted to ride our horses through the shortcut back to the camp to spare our aching bums and knees! We accordingly decided against doing our scheduled hike for the day.

We decided to head to St Lucia instead and we checked into BiB's international backpackers lodge. Coincidently, we found out that our Lidwala lodge Manager, Mirela, was there too, as well as the dutch couple from Lidwala!

We went to the bank to pick up cash and lo and behold- the very credit card that Sami spent hours trying to re-activate when we were about to go to Kruger Park was retained and DESTROYED by the ATM!! Needless to say, this hurled Sami into a very dark and angry place - yet more troubles with the bank! On a lighter note, Nicholson, the lovely lodge dog, followed us all the way from BiB's. So adorable! He also had a duel with some monkeys who tried to sneak up on him on the way, but he won it!

We then went for dinner at Braza and had an excellent 3-course meal.

September 21, 2009 - Mlilwane & The Cave

We woke up early and chilled at Lidwala reading celebrity gossips magazines and setting up the blog.

We left the lodge to go to Mlilwane for an overnight horseback trek with our guide, Nathi. Nathi introduced us to our horses, Chunky (Gen's) and Silver (Sami's).

Chunky was disobedient and scarred the hell out of Gen when he started acting up while crossing through a stream.

Nathi gave Gen a branch and it turned out that the threat of being whipped made Chunky much more obedient! The views along the ride were beautiful and we got to get close to some of the wild life, including antelopes and zebras.

We stopped for a snack and when it came time to continue, Silver decided that he didn't feel like moving. Even while using all of his body weight, Sami was unable to pull him along. Gen found this very funny! We finally got to the cave where we would be spending the night, very sore after the 4-hour horse ride. The hike up to the cave was also pretty steep. When we got to the cave, our cook, Maja, was already peparing dinner over an open fire. Nathi gave us a "tour" of the tiny cave, including the very fancy yet ruggedly rustic stone toilet.

We just chilled with some tea while we waited for dinner, which turned out to be very yummy. We roasted some marshmallows over the fire before falling asleep around 8:30pm. As we slept, bats swooped down just over our faces and the wind from the bats' wings acted as a nice fan! Overall, a very cool and unique experience!

September 20, 2009 - Swazi Culture

In the morning, we visited the Swazi Cultural Village at Mantenga. On the way we walked through a crafts market and visited the waterfall behind the village. Despite our detours, we think we arrived at the village too early as locals were still sleeping (and loudly snoring) in their beehive huts and everyone but our guide was wearing western clothes! We waited to watch the traditional Swazi dance performance, which was very entertaining. We did not join the official tour, which was more staged (i.e. people wearing traditional clothes, and not sleeping!!).

After lunch, we went for a hike up Sheeba's Breast mountain. The hike was extremely steep at some points, making it especially difficult and dangerous to come down, but the views from the top were simply magnificent. With aching knees and still heavily breathing, we came upon a local man who appeared at first to be dead, but who then started singing to himself while he lied down barefoot on a giant rock.

Later on, we went to the Cuddle Puddle, only to realize that it was not an actual hot spring but rather a pool full of guys. The indiens were all checking out Gen even before she put on a bathing suit, so we quickly decided we weren't joining the sausage party! We still stayed there for a bit to watch the people as it seemed like it was a pretty popular hang for local youth.

We went to dinner at Quatermain's pub and had two gigantic steaks with Swazi sweet wine! Yumm!