Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Durban Days


Well, whilst the Von Trapp family might advocate that you "start at the very beginning, the very best place to begin" I've decided to bypass details of our outward journey* and leap straight in to our first few days in South Africa, which we spent in Graham's birthplace: Durban, a coastal city in KwaZulu Natal.

Since I have never managed to master getting multiple photos to appear at the right point in any post I've decided to do lots of tiny weeny posts, with just a pic or 2 each. This probably means that the posts themselves will be in a rather strange order (germ-fuddled brain too dozy to try to think this through) but at least relevant pictures should be with relevant text!

Just to set the scene: most of our time in Durban consisted of socialising and visiting such important sites as "the house where we used to live", "another house where we used to live", "where I went to school", "another school I went to", "where my mother went to school". I do not, alas have a photographic record of either the socialising or the landmarks. But what I have captured are images of a wonderful "wildside of Durban" tour put together by Graham's friend Dave and lots of flora and fauna images from Durban Botanical Gardens and Mitchell Park. the picture with this post is of one of the many trees I fell in love with in the Botanical Gardens. I also fell in love with the crumpets (NB for non-South African readers, "crumpets" are not those lovely doughy things riddled with holes for soaking up maximum quantities of butter, no, South African crumpets are what my mother would call a "scotch pancake" and I would call a "drop scone". Follow this link if you want to read more about this muddled nomenclature. No matter what they're called, in the Botanical Gardens they are served warm, with maple syrup and cream. And you get 2 on a plate!)

If I were to try and encapsulate my memories of Durban in just a few words I'd say "humidity, birdsong, monkeys and fruit bat". Every evening as we dined with Denzil and Bobby we could see a fruit bat swooping around outside!

*fear not, gentle reader, you will get to read about the air traffic control strike at Paris Charles de Gaulle, but probably not for another couple of days...

4 comments:

picperfic said...

now I remember taking my children on a tour of where I used to live, my old school, the park where I used to play in, mind you it wasn't anywhere near as far away as SA it was in fact Weston Shore, Southamptonton...right near the docks! They weren't impressed as I remember rightly!

Hope your muddled head clears soon enough, my took about three weeks and it drove me insane, I couldn't hear properly either ggrrrrr

I love that tree too, I think I may have had a camera permanently stuck to my face!

Looking forward to the next installment, now go and rest!

Mary deB said...

Oooh, I love the crafty travelogue!

You can (if your blogger is like my blogger) highlight a picture and cut/paste it. I find the preview doesn't really tell you where things will actually end up, but it's a bit of a help.

jayne said...

Can't wait to see the rest of your photos, Rosie, it looks great! Looks like you had a fabulous holiday.
Like you, I had trouble initially with multiple photos - I ended up clicking on the downloaded image and dragging it to where I wanted it! Thanks again for taking a look!
Jayne

Daisy said...

Ah yes, the great crumpet debate! I've had this conversation on the Knittyboard!