Saturday, September 25, 2010

Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 12:02 AM Durban Time- Bel-Aire Suites

            Okay, the complimentary breakfast at our hotel is off the CHAIN. That's not really relevant to anything but I just had to put it out there. After we ate we took a minibus into Downtown. The minibuses in Durban were a lot more laidback than the ones in Cape Town. They didn't try to jam as many people in and the guys weren't as aggressive trying to get people to ride. They were also cheaper (3 Rand, less than 50 cents).

            Once we got into town I noticed something that I had kind of noticed before at the airport. Everybody in Durban has a good tooth or gold teeth. A ton of people have them. It kind of reminds me of being in a city in North Florida or something. It's interesting. There was also a lot more signs and all that in the native language (Zulu) than in Cape Town or even Jo'burg. In some ways it felt like I was more "in Africa" because there were a lot more black people out on the streets and the language thing but in some ways it felt "not African" because the street reminded me of Times Square or State Street in Chicago and there was a lot of Indian people. It's kind of funny how that works. But downtown was cool. Looked around a lot of places, didn't buy anything, but I did get my haircut.

Another thing that I noticed here, especially at the barbershop is that people speak to you first in Zulu. This has happened to me before in Cape Town but usually as soon as I talk back and they hear my accent or hear me speaking in English they switch to English. In Durban I've kind of had to straight say to people that I only speak English to get them to use it. It seems like they're less used to dealing with tourists, or at least black tourists.

            That night we had dinner and went to a bar with a few students from our study abroad program that were also vacationing in Durban. It was a fun time and the food was great. Lamb is my new favorite meat. I've been eating it all the time. At the dinner they had more African dancing and such. It was cool. Kind of similar to some of the stuff they did at the place in Jo'burg.

"hey zulu"

-method man and redman

peace,

nate

 

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