Update From Durban, South Africa

Well I'm in Durban and almost out of time!

I left Storms River for Port Elizabeth where I stayed only one night then headed to East London. I stayed at a place called The Sugar Shack right on the beach - a surfer's hostel. I met a surfer dude named Andy who is my age and working there and saw what could have been had I become a surf bum...

From East London, I headed up to Hogsback in the mountains to do some hiking. Tolkien used to live in this area when he was a boy and rumour has it the Misty Mountains and some of the other things from The Lord of The Rings came from this area. I can see why people might think that as it is quite stunning [photos later].

After a couple of days there, I went to Cintsa, back on the coast. I did a day trip into the Trans-Kei and visited a job creation project in the area. They have a little village where they do tours to show the traditional lifestyle of the people. In order to maintain and expand the place, they cut down alien wood [trees that are not indigenous to South Africa] to make furniture, they create leather goods, and they sell seedlings to local farmers. It was quite interesting and I even joined in with the traditional healers to do a little dance and bang on the drums. We also visited a ship wreck on the coast, where we saw lots of dolphins, and stopped at a nice lagoon for a swim and a bit of cliff jumping.

From there, I went to Coffee Bay where I partied a bit, chilled on the beach, and took a drumming lesson. Last night I arrived in Durban to pick up some more anti-malarial drugs before heading up to Swaziland. Unfortunately, I'm almost out of time, so I'm going to have to skip KwaZulu-Natal to get to Swaziland and Kruger. I guess that leaves me some things to do when I come back.

Talk at you later.