After our amazing safari, Shaul, Anthony and I flew to our next destination, Durban, where we would stay the night before picking up our rental car. Durban is on the coast and is also adjacent to the largely white owned sugar cane industry. While we expected Durban to be more of the city that it is, we were both pleased and a little put off by our accommodation which was the Durban Gay Guest House. Behind several layers of security, we were greeted by our friendly host, LLewellyn, who showed us into a very nicely designed, modern guest house. The only off-putting element was the extra security gate at the bedroom level AND the security alarm in each room. This was the part of south Africa that I had, thankfully, put out of my mind. On the very positive side, we spent the evening with a Dutch friend of Anthony, a physician who is working on an HIV prevention study in women, who took us out to a bustling place where the final from the world cup was on TV. Since none of us really cared (except for the straight Dutch guy) we had an emotion free evening as the World Cup finally came to an end. It was interesting to see the somewhat evenly divided crowd of fans, since the Dutch had been fairly brutal occupants of South Africa during the colonial days. There was an entire article on this in the NY Times for those interested in why the oppressed would root for their former oppressors.
Following Durban, we drove to Himesville, about 4 hours away, without the GPS I thought we had ordered from Avis. The map looked simple enough -- north and then west. And it turned out, for once that, it was, in fact, that simple. We stopped in a lovely colonial town called Howick for lunch that had a charming little town centre, a waterfalls, a quaint local museum (common in South Africa) and a good number of very reasonably priced antique stores. It was too bad that I was following my discipline of not buying antiques as I struggled to keep my weight down -- both personally and, for this purpose, the weight of my luggage.
We also ran into an interesting phenomenon that begin in Howick -- no two people in South Africa agree on how long it will take to drive from point-to-point. What started out as a simple inquiry turned into a bit of an unstructured survey. And I received at least 4 answers for the time it would take to get to our final destination of Underberg. For the curious this was: 3 1/2 hours, 45 minutes, 90 minutes and 2 hours. Turns out that 2 hours was about the right answer given that we were on two lane "tarred" roads which were beautifully scenic as we were rising in altititud but where the occasional very large truck gets in front of you. One learns to appreciate 4 lane highways but also to appreciate the a ride in the countryside does not require that you pass every vehicle in sight -- just many of them. Or you will never get there.
Anyway, we were pleased to get to our next accommodation, Moorcroft Manor, which was a combo motel and charming guest house with a roaring fire, lovely dining room AND internet access! We enjoyed several nights stay there though since we were about 1400 meters in altitude it was a bit chilly.
This stop included our visit to the mountain top visit to Lesotho which involved about 8 hours of driving on gravel roads up to the Sani Pass. For those who want to see more, please use this link: http://www.drakensberg-tourism.com/sani-pass.html
And for those who want to know more about this very long day, please feel free to query me over a glass of wine. It is one of those places you will only see once in a life time. The scenery is spectacular and the people you see living in the barren land on the mountain top REALLY challenge every concept one holds but what it really takes to survive in this world.
On that note... I will post now. More of the driving tour when I return.
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