Durban the City!

Durban - it's South Africa's 3rd largest city located on the Indian Ocean, and it claims to be South Africa's sporting capital. Durban's beachfront is the city's trademark for activities. We stayed on the north coast at Umhlanga Rocks which is part of the Dolphin Coast. The coast gets its name from the bottled nosed dolphins that visit the area. The dolphin watching tours were booked well in advance, so there was no chance to see them. The word Umhlanga (pronounced UMH-SH-LANGA) means "place of reeds" in Zulu.

Sasha's enjoying the cool ocean breeze on Umhlanga Rocks Beach.

Fred and Sasha walking along the Umhlanga Rocks Promenade. The Promenade is 4 miles long.

Here's Fred at Umhlanga pier - seriously windy that day.

The Umhlanga Lighthouse at the end of Bronze Beach. It was about 3 in the afternoon, and there were still a lot of folks at the beach.

Most of the beaches in Durban are dog friendly. So, we didn't really have any trouble taking Sasha along with us. This pic was taken at Umdloti Beach. It has numerous rock formations that break up the strength of the ocean waves. Consequently, this beach is great for swimmers, snorklers and divers. Doesn't that rock formation behind Steph look like a hand?

Fred and Sasha at Umdloti. When we were there, it was low tide, so plenty of sea creatures were visible - fish, crabs, mussels, etc.

Later that same day, we decided to take a boat tour. Here's Fred in front of our "ride." It'll do.

The wharf is very near downtown Durban.

Here's a landscape shot of the stadium that was built for the 2010 World Cup. The stadium really hasn't been used for any soccer matches since the World Cup. Nowadays, people bungee jump off of the top of that arch. Um, no thanks. I like the view from the shark infested water.

So the boat tour was only an hour, but this little girl missed the entire tour. She passed out about five minutes into the tour, and slept through some killer waves.

The next day we ventured out to Glenashley Beach. Durban is one of the main ports in South Africa. Here's a cargo ship heading to port. We counted 17 more behind it.

Glenashley Beach is one of the many beaches in Durban where surfers can find some sweet waves. Kite-surfing is particularly popular. Here are 2 of them in this photo, but there were about 15 out that morning.

The Umhlanga Promenade was about a 10 minute walk from our B&B. Here's Steph and Sasha heading down the steps toward the beach.

Durban is a large city, and it is situated near numerous nature reserves. Because of its proximity to the reserves, we would often see monkeys scoping out the residential parts of town looking for grub. Hanging out on the roof of the home next door were three monkeys. We were worried about Sasha being shark bait - we didn't even consider that he'd be monkey bait too.

We drove to Ballito, a town 30 minutes north of Umhlanga. Ballito starts a continuous strip of seaside guesthouses and condos. Ballito Beach has a natural tidal pool (basically, natural formed swimming pool). It was pretty cool, and you didn't even have to walk onto the sand.

Steph managed to find the only Argentine restaurant in South Africa, called BAR-BA-COA we had to check it out, not bad a bit dissapointed to not have any real Argentines around in the kitchen or hosting.

We really enjoyed our time in Durban and it was a great way to start the new year.