As always I will preface this post by apologizing to my friends and family for the absurd amount of time it is taking me in between these posts. In my defense however, which really is only worth about, well nothing really, I have been extremely busy over the last month. As fast as I came to my site for the first time like a wild gypsy it was already the end of March and time to leave. The first quarter of school wrapped up quite nicely and it was time to go back to Maseru for 10 days for phase III training. It was nice to see all of my colleagues again and hear of their numerous trials and tribulations. The training was actually rather good so kudos to PC Lesotho for that. Even the capital city of a third world country is sensory overload after you have lived in the middle of the mountains for three months. Some of the highlights of the gathering include a trip to the new movie theater to see Avatar. The movie was aweful, but it was nice to smell popcorn and sit in air conditioning for a while for only about 2 bucks. We also held the first annual PC Lesotho Mustache games which was a blast thanks to Mr Vino for making that happen, details on this will be told in person =) I also went to my first Maseru night club with a gang of friends which was ridiculous. The local MCs who were rapping were pretty good. I can only imagine what runs through the locals minds when almost 40 foreigners raid a bar, hilarious I say. So lets skip to the vacation! After 3 months at site and 10 days doing “extensive” PC training we were all ready for some R and R. I went to Durban with 10 of my new closest PC buds. The trip from Ficksburg to Durban was 190R (about 30US) and usually takes about 5 hours. Well due to getting pulled over by the SA police three times due to a cracked windshield in the Kombi it took us over 7, TIA. The trip was eventful and we saw zebras, monkeys, and a baboon chilling on the side of the road, a definite perk of living in Africa. So my first experience into living in a hostel was fantastic. We stayed at the Hippo Hide Hostel in Durban and it was great. They even claim to have the largest rock pool in the southern hemisphere and a honesty system self serve bar, at this point I’m still not sure which is more impressive, but I digress. The first day finds us unwinding in the pool for a bit and heading to the Suncoast beach for dinner. There we messed around in the casino for a bit and ate fresh sushi on the water. Ya you can probably imagine how amazing it was. Just to smell the salt water knocked my socks off. The beach was closed, but using my boyish charm I was able to convince a SA police officer to escort us down for 5 minutes so we could put our feet in the Indian Ocean for a few minutes. See picture below. Wow it was great to be back at sea level! Day two Parker and I made breakfast for everyone… what?! Fresh cheese? And scrambled eggs? WOOT! We decided to spend part of the afternoon at the mall just to get a real culture shock. Was it big? Three stories and bigger then any mall I have ever been in. I think some dude said it had 27 entrances, yikes! Lets not forget KFC and subway. It was here I had my first draught beer in 5 months at a nice little pub on the top floor. Yep… just like I remembered. I will say that it took a while to let everything soak in and remember that things that I was seeing still do exist. That night we all decided to go eat some Indian food. Durban has the highest Indian population outside of India so needless to say the food was pretty authentic and amazingly good. On a recommendation from the waiter we ended up at this pretty lame dance club, you win some you lose some, either way I still had fun. The next day was the pinnacle of the vacation. A few of us decided to go to the water park uShaka which is right on the Indian ocean. Lets not forget an ample serving of McDonalds breakfast, yeah I know egg mcmuffin incredible! The park was great, my favorite part was the lazy river that went through parts of the aquarium, totally awesome. (See Picture below). Later that day we went to a SA Sharks rugby game. This could be the most fun thing I did on the vacation. My friend Sonny says soccer is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans and rugby is a hooligans game played by gentleman. That made me laugh pretty hard. The game was intense and the Sharks actually won which was pretty cool. To top it of was a pitcher of beer and some comical banter I had with a few of the local fans, those guys were great. We ended the day by going to one of the most amazing sea food restaurants I have ever been to called Wilson’s Warf. It was located right on the pier and was incredible. Im pretty sure the waitress ripped me off at the end, but either the way the meal was still super cheap and after a day like that I just wanted to go to bed. We spent the next morning eating eggs benedict at an Italian eatery down the street wow how I have missed you old friend. Part 2 to be continued….
