Durban

I found it very hard trying to concentrate on work on the morning of Tuesday October 16, 2007 knowing what I had in store for the next 2 weeks. Luckily at 12:30 I left the office and made my way to the bus station in Bristol to catch a ride down to Heathrow where I met my parents who had flown in from Canada a few days before. We also met up with 12 other members of our extended family who were all on the same flight to South Africa for my Cousin Chris' wedding.

The flight went by fairly quickly for a 10 hour direct flight to Johannesburg International airport even though it was delayed leaving Heathrow. This resulted in us missing our connecting flight to Durban but they had already booked us on the next flight out 2 hours later before we even arrived in South Africa. It was a quick 1.5hour flight to Durban and it felt so nice to get out into the hot sun after all that travelling.

We were shuttle bussed to a resort south of Durban called Pumula where I was shown to my room with a balcony overlooking the Indian Ocean. What a stunning view it was. The resort was right on the beach but still had its own pool, trampoline, and bouncy castle. I made use of it all except the bouncy castle due to the age restriction.


The following day we swam in the ocean, sun tanned by the pool, and made our way to a place called Crocworld. We only had about an hour to see the Crocodiles though before the place closed. There were tons of the mean looking animals around and at 20ft long they are rather intimidating. However this did not stop 2 employees climbing in to retrieve a few crocodile eggs. The only problem with this was the adult crocs where sitting on them. Armed with nothing but a long stick these 2 men started hitting the crocs on the snout trying to get them to move. Clearly this irritated the crocs who started snapping and snarling at these men who eventually all ran off. All except one croc who stood his ground and watched as these men took the eggs. What a job. Not sure how much they were getting paid but I bet it wasn't close to enough.





Once back at the resort we were out on the patio overlooking the ocean when we saw a few fins on the inside of the shark net. The lone surfer didn't seem to be too phased by it so we decided it had to be dolphins. At that point a wave broke and we saw about 10 or more dolphins surfing in the wave before turning and swimming north along the coast. It was a truly amazing site.


The remainder of the day was spent eating, drinking, and meeting the bride and groom for drinks which was followed by a few games of darts in the resort bar before calling it a night. The following morning we packed up our things, had breakfast, and made our way towards the game reserve called Tula where Chris and Jacqui were getting married.