Love on the Rocks

A glorious view from our room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. 

Last weekend was a three day holiday weekend here in South Africa. The holiday is called Day of Reconciliation and it's purpose is to celebrate and promote racial harmony and unity. The holiday was first celebrated in 1995 after the end of apartheid. 

Mr. Deep and I took a trip to Kwa Zulu Natal one of the South African provinces. Affectionately called K Zed N, remember a Z is called a Zed here, Kwa Zulu Natal is in the south eastern part of the country and has a lovely, long coastline along the Indian Ocean.  Last year, we visited Durban in K Zed N, but it was winter and it was rainy and cold. This time, however the weather was perfect. 

We stayed in Umhlanga Rocks, located north of Durban at a fancy schmancy hotel called the Beverly Hills. 

My suggestion is that you run, not walk to the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is luxurious and every room faces the ocean. They give you champagne when you check in. They give you more champagne at breakfast. While you are laying in the sun a guy comes by and asks you if you want your sunglasses cleaned. Then later another guy comes by and asks if you if want a popsicle. If you want, you can also get a massage right there overlooking the beach. 

The rocks in Umhlanga Rocks

It looks like a face

Rock close up

I mentioned in this post that Mr. Deep and I only recently became aware that you can sit around on vacation and do absolutely nothing. Why it took us so long to learn that lesson I am not sure. But nothing is precisely what we did for three days. Because we didn't DO anything this blog post is not going to be chock full of content. But we got some great photos and I wanted to share them. You might notice that most of the pics appear to be taken from the same exact vantage point. That's because I rarely got up from my chair. And what I found out is that if you just sit in the same spot for a while interesting things will actually happen right in front of you. 

I mentioned we didn't move much right? 

A wedding took place out on the pier. Luckily, I had my zoom lens and could remain comfortably seated and still get some photos.

 

You can probably guess who took the next two photos. 

Eventually, we did get up an explore a bit. But don't worry we quickly returned to the comfort of our chairs. 

It was Mr. Deep's idea that we snap this pic because there were so many shades of blue.

I Hear Laughter in the Rain

This past weekend we visited Durban. Durban is located on the east coast in the province of KwaZulu Natal. Known for its sub-tropical climate and lovely beaches, Durban is also the largest and busiest shipping terminal on the continent. 

The advice we received from locals was not to visit Cape Town in the winter as it's cold and rainy. You will remember that we did visit Cape Town back in May but took a day trip to the 
Cape of Good Hope leaving the cold gale force winds behind in Cape Town. Durban, however is supposed to be hot and sunny pretty much all year long.

Two weeks ago we looked at the Durban weather forecast and noticed that among the plethora of sunny and mid 70 degree temperature days ahead were a few days of cooler weather and rain. Those were the very days we would be visiting. We laughed at the audacity of weather forecasters thinking they could predict weather two weeks in advance. 

Shortly after we arrived in Durban on Friday afternoon it began to rain heavily and soon after that the power went out due to load shedding. By evening the power was back on but when we went to dinner it pouring so hard that we had to take Uber instead of walking even though our hotel was just a few blocks away.

Despite the rain, Durban was lovely. It is much greener than Joburg with lots of sugar cane fields and rolling hills. Of course the main reason to visit is to see the Indian Ocean.  My photography teacher said you can take the best photos when the light is low due to clouds or time of day. So there's that consolation.

Our hotel must have had a lot of cancellations because instead of getting a regular room when we checked in, we ended up getting a fancy apartment. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and deck with a pool and braai. Unfortunately we didn't have a car to go and buy any meat to braai. We also didn't have any friends to invite to stay in our extra bedroom but it was still very lovely to have so much space. 

 

We made the most of our weekend by visiting the spa and watching the rugby game in the bar. During the game there were loads of South African fans who came out of the wood work to watch. It seemed like the hotel was pretty empty except for during the game the bar got so crowded that the staff had to bring in banquet chairs for people to sit. Sadly SA lost to New Zealand. We had little insight into what was going on but cheered when everyone else did in order to get into the spirit.

At the hotel we spotted a monkey in a tree. He looked very innocent munching leaves but we knew at any time he could come down and try to steal something.

Sunday it cleared up right before we left for the airport. It was at this point that Mr. Deep put his toe into the Indian Ocean for the very first time. You will remember he wasn't with us when we visited Cape L'Agulhas.  

Hahahaha