It's been a busy ten days but we finally made it back to Cape Town in one piece. Starting off with last Monday we flew to Durban using South African Airlines (great airline). They feed and water you like there's no tomorrow, which may or may not be a good thing. We arrived at roughly four o'clock but since Durban is a thousand miles northeast of here and in the same time zone it felt much later. We promptly retrieved our rental car, a Renault Clio and managed to pack our luggage into the small hatch. We headed off to uMkomaas about fifteen minutes south of the airport where our first two nights would be spent. This is a town that makes its' living from diving/snorkeling. There is a big reef a few miles off the coast into which a ship sunk on and that makes great diving. Apparently this is where the fish like to hang out and therefore sharks like to feed on the fish. And people like to watch the fish and the sharks. No great whites here but hammerheads, ragged tooth and others which can be dangerous. A friend of ours from church here is helping her son get a guest house off the ground so we wanted to visit. We also visited Croc World while we were here and also played on the beach. While we were here we were able to see the devastation caused by huge 5 meter waves a few months back on the shoreline. Most of one highway was totally collapsed.

The next part of our journey was spent along the northeastern coast of South Africa in Zulu Land. We passed through acres of sugar cane and villages all along the way until we got to Emdoneni Lodge very near to Hluhluhe National Park (pronounced shlushlooey – sort of). This was to be our base while we explored the park and also St. Lucia National Wetlands. On our first day we went on a game drive with an open truck as well as drove through the park on our own. This was great, since first the driver Amanda gave us good info on the animals and solid tips on places to check later. We scored dozens of sitings of giraffe, various deer type animals, buffalo (real ones – not bison), baboons, zebra and a rhino. In the afternoon we saw some massive rhinos, more giraffe and a couple of elephants from afar. Endomeni also was the home of a cat rehabilitation centre so we were able to watch some big cats such as caracal, serval and cheetah get their daily feeding as well as a huge African Fish Eagle try to clean up some leftovers. On the lodge grounds there were zebra, impala and monkeys that we could watch while we sat around. We also ate our meals here which was part of the package and that was a real treat. All of our breakfasts were outside and the suppers were four course and fantastic. St.Lucia was a small town with some big attractions – hippos. These bad boys are massive. We took a boat cruise up the estuary led by an amateur comedian and watched about twenty in one family grouping. These are the most dangerous animals in all of Africa. We spent a part of the day in Cape Vidal which is an amazing stretch of beach with rock ponds which capture many ocean creatures during high tide and allow you to walk on them and explore during low tide. The kids loved jumping into the waves.

We were sad to leave Endomeni but we needed to see a little of what Durban the city had to offer. We were supposed to have stayed at Dan and Yvonne's place in PieterMaritzburg but it didn't quite work out the way we planned. We couldn't get the key since they were away and the fellow who had the key was also out so we stayed in a little lodge for one night, called a cousin of our brother Peter's and were invited to stay in Durban for the remainder of our holiday. It turns out this was a nice mixup as we got to know some new friends and were treated like royalty. We did manage to explore PMB for one evening and found it to be a very nice little city, reminded me of Brandon. We had supper at the local casino at the John Dory's seafood restaurant which had a fabulous aquarium that kept the kids enthralled for most of the meal.

The next day we meandered over to Durban. On our way to enjoy the beach festival we stopped in at a market site the size of two or three football fields. We couldn't believe how many vendors there were. It was a warm day and the waves were performing nicely for the big surf competition. Henry enjoyed the skateboard park and Harry had the most fun with his Shrek toy in the sand. There was also FIFA beach soccer and musical entertainment.

Our second day in Durban we found our way over to UShaka Sea World and Wet'n'Wild. This was a great day filled with dolphin, seal and penguin shows; an aquarium that was situated inside a shipwreck (manmade) as well as waterslides, river meanders and fun in the pool. It was a perfect way to end a vacation. We found Durbanites to be very friendly and would love to go back to visit again.