Surfin Safari!

We have learned that animal safaris are amazing and you do see some incredible things, however kids get bored on safari's because you have to just sit in the vehicle and look...unless you want to get out and risk becoming a lion's snack.  So we skipped the animals and headed for the beach.

We headed South of Durban and stayed at Rocky Bay which was near the Aliwal Shoal.  The shoal is well known by scuba divers and shark snorkelers, which Greg, Kelly and Katie can now call themselves.  They left our cozy cabin in the early hours of the morning, donned wetsuits and headed out to the shoal to hang from a bar while black tipped sharks (not known to be aggressive???) swam all around them.

Swimming companions!

Greg & the girls hanging onto the bar...

Close encounter!  I think that is Katie in the photo...

Charlie and I wisely had a lazy morning at the beach then we watched them come in on the boat and got to hear about their adventure first hand!  

The beach really was "rocky" and had the most incredible sea shells to collect, we picked up tons in the days we were there.  We also checked out the local place called "Croc World" where they had about 300 Nile Crocodiles lazing about.  Greg observed that crocodiles don't really do a whole lot.

 Greg and Kelly were brave enough to hold a baby crocodile..

 We stayed at nice little log cabins on the beach, we liked it because it reminded us of our NH place...here is Katie relaxing.

Charlie and Kelly on the big rocks.

Our next stop was the town of Margate where we stayed in a high rise apartment place on the beach.  Greg had been there for a conference.  The kids loved it, and it was nice to stroll right out onto the beach.  The town was getting ready to host Harley Davidson's Africa Bike week later in the week, we could see all the setups being done but we managed to get out of town before the bikers rolled in!

Here is the morning sunrise, Greg & Charlie and I were up to see it.  We found a great used bookstore in the town, so they are reading one of Charlie's new books.

The girls were signed up for a surf lesson and the waves were breaking right that morning at Southbroom Beach, which turned out to be the most beautiful beach and beach town about 15 minutes from Margate.

Here are the girls getting their intro from the instructor, who did a really nice job.

While they were getting the lesson a guy was there with a huge camera taking photos, we thought maybe he was the other girl in the lesson's husband...turns out he was a photographer for "Go" Magazine (a travel magazine her in SA)  They were doing a story on this surfing school because it has such a good reputation.  So Kelly and Katie may be in an upcoming edition, if they are Charlie said we will have to buy lots of copies!

Kelly loved surfing and now wants to save her money for a surf board, Katie liked it but thought the board was super heavy.  The beach here was amazing, there was a river that flowed into the ocean, so you could jump on a boogie board and ride it around a little bend, this is what Charlie and I did while we waited for the girls to finish their lesson.

We had read about this place called Pistols Saloon, it is famous for its donkey...the only thing the guidebook didn't tell us was to feed our meals to the donkey, we wished we had because the food was TERRIBLE!

 It was an American Wild West themed place in the middle of South Africa, go figure?  It even had a "Wild West Museum" that was mostly pictures of Cowboys, Indians, etc.

Here is the donkey eating some carrots-at our table!  Can you imagine that passing restaurant health codes in the US?

 We took advantage of seeing the Avengers on opening night, Charlie wore his t-shirt for the occasion and was happy about his 3-D glasses.

Here was the parking garage at the mall, just to remind us it was Africa a monkey was running around!

Our last morning at the great beach, we were sad to leave, especially Charlie who loved playing rugby on the beach with his new "Sharks" ball, that is the Durban professional rugby team.

 On our way home we stopped in at the Mandela capture site where he was taken prisoner in 1962, at the time he was on his way from Durban back to Johannesburg.  We were on the same route back that day..

The sculpture is really neat, it is a bunch of steel rods that make his image when you are standing at the right vantage point.  What I really enjoyed was seeing all people coming to see the memorial, there were older white South Africans, young black and white South Africans, families, etc. 

 Clearly Mandela is revered by all!

We loved the beaches of Kwazulu-Natal Province (KZN here) and we can't wait to go back!