Heya everyone!! we've been in SA for 2 days now...

yesterday we went to the botanical gardens after walking the entire perimeter trying to find the gate! It was beautiful and luscious. We had some different fruits for afternoon tea which included a fruit which was a cross between a peach and a nectarine and some Papaya which tasted like tea and chocolate. We then had a BBQ dinner at Dee’s house (Mrs. Anning’s sister) which was lovely! Their house was amazing (we even got to swim in their pool!) and they were lovely people!

Today we went to the BAT Centre which was an African art gallery. The art work there was absolutely awesome!! they had heaps of different wood cuts (similar to lino prints) paintings, sculptures, pots, baskets, wire and beaded figurines! We decided that we are definitely going back there at the end of our trip to buy them out!!

We then walked around down town Durban trying to find an apartheid museum using a map that didn’t include many roads. Most of the street names down here also changed recently which also made it difficult. We had a look at the natural science museum at a NO SMOKING display which was a bit random but pretty cool. they had this camera and computer program that showed you what you’d look like at age 72 and added the effects of sun exposure and smoking… pretty freaky stuff!!

We haven’t been treated to another thunderstorm yet (but have been told that the one we saw in the plane was a bigg’in even by South Africa’s standards!

We’ve got an early start in the morning as we head off to the game park, hluhluwe imfiloze at 6:15 in the morning! we are all extremely pumped!!


XXX

Arrived in Durban safely despite the thunderstorm that threatened to turn our plane back to Johannesburg!
We're staying in a very quaint little hostel, called Nomads. The people here are really nice and we even have a pool!
Today we are just recovering from our jet lag, and had our first trip to the small Pick n Pay up the road, to buy our breakfast.
We'll be having dinner tonight with Mrs Anning's (English Teacher at Collegiate) sister - she called and offered to have a bbq for us!
Tomorrow we may venture into Durban proper and have a look around and visit the beach. It is very warm, but also very muggy and overcast, not unbearable but it is meant to reach 31 degrees today.
We are all looking forward to our safari after being briefed by our guide this morning, and it sounds very exciting!

We'll update again soon before we leave Durban in two days.

Hi everyone,
in Perth airport, smooth flights so far.
Stayed at the Formule 1 motel at Melbourne Airport last night; very luxurious...Everyone is fine and looking forward to getting to Durban tonight. We'll see if we can get onto the internet when we get to Durban.

We picked up our group budget yesterday and it came up 150,000 rand because none of our accommodation or anything has been pre-booked because of our last minute change of destination.

We had a lovely breakfast on the plane (the scrambled egg, 3cm sausage and hash brown was particularly divine)

Everyone sends their love to everyone.

Welcome Everyone!

Hi all,
Just writing the first post to get us started.
So we're going to wear our orange shirts at the airport and on the plane if everyone is OK with that.
Merry Christmas and see you soon!