Beach trip to Durban

I know I haven't been posting in a while.  To be honest, I have been feeling a little disillusioned lately.  (See last post).  But the last week has improved exponentially!  Jonathan got here a week ago and we have been going ever since.  We took a road trip to Durban, on the Indian Ocean.  It is a 6 hour drive from Jo'burg to Durban and quite scenic.  You drive southeast and parallel the Drakensberg Mountains for a while.  They are beautifully rugged with snow-capped peaks. They are the natural border between South Africa and the mountain nation of Lesotho (pronounced Lesutu), which is a tiny nation plopped down right in the middle of SA. (Click on the link above to read more about Lesotho.)

A desolate drive between Jo'burg and Durban.

The Drakensbergs in the background with snow on the very tops.

Our pitstop in Harrismith, about half way to Durban.

It is winter here but Durban stays relatively warm year-round.  The daytime temps were in the 70s though the water was a bit cooler.  We stayed right in Durban proper, a beach town that reminds me of an older Panama City Beach.  There is a beachfront boardwalk with a skate park, snack bars, and people of all shapes, colors, sizes, and ages strolling, jogging, biking.  We checked into a nice hotel overlooking the beach and spent the next few days just being tourists.  It was heaven.  We found a surfboard rental shop where Jonathan found a good deal on a board for a two-day rental.  We struck out for the beach only to find that, while the beachfront might resemble Panama City, the waves definitely do not.  Wave height varied anywhere from 5 to 15 feet!  Jonathan braved the cold water, the waves, and the extreme current but nature won out and he never did catch that perfect wave.  But I am happy to say that no sharks caught him either.  This coastline is known for being shark infested but Durban has invested in shark nets that run just offshore for miles along the coast.

The view from our hotel room

Such a surfer dude!

Jonathan eyeing the surf.

Durban beachfront. In the background is the Moses Mabhida Stadium, built for the Soccer World Cup in 2010.

Several people we know here in Jo'burg spend their summer vacations and other holidays in an area north of Durban called Ballito.  We took a drive up there and were blown away by the beautiful scenery.  The coast is mountainous, the beach rocky and the waves huge.  Jonathan spent the entire day trying to talk us into buying a beach house. Beach property is very reasonable here but still not reasonable enough for us!

The Ballito Coastline

The view from our lunch restaurant in Ballito

The Glamour Wears Off

Well, I knew it would happen.  The excitement of living overseas, of visiting 3 continents in 3 weeks, of "the most perfect weather in the world", has finally ebbed (nay, died) and reality has set in.  Winter does come to Africa-at least in the most southern part.  And while most of the year the weather is almost perfect, winter nights here get flat out frigid.  Freezing, in fact.  And houses with no heat other than one small fireplace get frigid as well.  Jon and I have spent the last week buying room heaters of various sizes.  We have a giant LP gas heater for the first floor and of course I have asked all the requisite questions: Is it safe? Are we going to explode? Die of carbon monoxide poisoning? Does it (the heater) have to sit right there in the middle of the room? We have also bought electric mattress pads and lots of firewood, kindling and starter sticks.  It isn't that I mind the cold, I just wasn't prepared to be Laura Ingalls and relive my favorite episodes of Little House on the Prairie every night.  And with the extra demand on electricity comes the rolling black outs.  We have lost power twice this past week.  One night Jon came home very late (around 11:00 pm) and yelled up the stairs at me to turn some lights on.  I told him I wished I could but the power was out.  I think he was so tired he didn't notice the entire neighborhood was dark when he drove in.

We have done without water this week as well.  No official explanation but we were without water for 24 hours.  I put my gym membership to good use (finally) and packed up a bag and went to the gym for a shower after a day without water.

The good news?  Life in Africa is still an adventure and a learning experience.  I have learned to use the sun and the glass windows to harvest heat during the day.  I have become a much better fire builder than even my dad would have believed.  We are not the only people to have to go to three different places before we can finally find a full LP gas tank. The power and the water always come back on at some point. 

And what did I realize yesterday as we drove around the highveld (pronounced high-feld and means high plateau, on which Jo'burg is situated)? I realized that even though it is cool and dry and there is a beautiful breeze there is also a heavy layer of smog across our province, Gauteng. Why?  Because there are literally millions of people in South Africa and tens of millions of people in Africa that do not have the financial resources to buy heaters and electric mattress pads. Their only source of heat is a wood fire. Their only source of wood is the wood they collect and/or chop themselves.  The smog is created by the millions of cooking and heating fires being built each day, fires that are necessary for survival.

Not so glamorous but so very grounding.

Love to all-Jody