Durban

hello everybody from One of South Africas capital cities, Pretoria. Me and amanda are about a third of the way through our big trip. So far we have spent 4 days in durban and 2 days traveling and 1 day in pretoria.
Durban was fantastic, we left wednesday morning and after a hellish 16 hour bus ride from PE we made it to durban where one of amandas friends from camp picked us up, that night we went to one of thier favorite bars and had a couple of drinks and met some new people (including a guy who i finally had a discussion about baseball with) anyways that night we crashed and the next morning Jess (amandas friends from camp) TJ (her fiance) amanda and i all went to the victoria market, which is a huge conglomeration of vendors selling their various wares. One thing i should note is that durban has a huge indian population so getting indan food was quick and easy. sorry small tangent, but after a day of haggling with indian vendors, we left with a great deal more than we came in with. That night we all were pretty tired from the night before so we grabbed some indian food and went home.

Friday we decided to go to a huge attraction called uShaka which was an aquarium/ water park. the aquarium was amazing, it was designed like a giant ship on the bottom of the ocean, and thier the display was amazing they had tons of really cool fish. after the aquarium we went into the water park area , which was a blast they had a ton of water slides and a lazy river which floated all around and went underneath the shark tank. It was a lot of fun, me and amanda decided that though it was something we not have done normally it was a ton of fun hanging out with jess and tj. then after the ushaka we went to jess's parents house, for a braii. her parents were a ton of fun and after the braii, the four of us left and went out and met up with a couple of jess and tj's friends we decided to call it in early though cause we were all tired and we needed to get up early the next morning.

The next morning we left and went to a mini nature reserve where you can drive your personal car though and see the animals. when we got there a very cranky old woman criticized jess and tj when we asked what animals people had seen she said something along the lines of being that they were south africans they ought to know better than coming in at mid day. disreguarding her we headed into the park which was beautiful. the first animals we saw were elephant, because its a small park the big animals are accompanied by trainers, who rather than show the animals off and parade them simply make sure they dont destroy your car. that said the elephants were very cool and very big, after we got some great pictures continued dr5iving a little later we saw what i thought was an elephant, turned out it was a baby rhino, who wasnt so baby, he was about the size of a coupe spoirts car. he was super interested in our car and came over to check us out, ultimatly he stuck his nose in the car and i got to pet him. the rest of the park was amazingly breathtaking. after the park we went to another one where we saw native dances and a ton of crocodiles. that night we went back to jess's parents house for left overs from the braii.

Sunday was a pretty long day jess and tj were moving, and since they had been more than accomodating, we and amanda helped them move despite the fact that they insisted that we did something else. that night we made dinner for them and went to bed pretty early because we were all exhausted and had to get up at the butt crack of dawn the next day.

Monday was another long bus ride day, we went from durban to pretoria. which was about 11 hours, once we got here our bacpaker picked us up and told us of a great place to go get dinner. after dinner it was another early bed night.

today we went to the pretoria zoo which was amazing, it was bigger than the san francisco zoo, and was bottom line amazing.

well tommorrow morning we leave for the last leg of our trip which takes us to the okavango delta, chobe national park and victoria falls, all of which i will probly not have access to internet and definatly not my cell phone, so when i get back i promise pictures and a blog untill than light some fireworks for me and have a great fourth of july