Life on the Indian Sub-Sub-Continent

*** Internet connections here in South Africa have proven to be a pain. I finally got a couple on this entry.***

Just don't look over the edge

Greetings all in the 30 something installment of Globetrotting Around the World. We are back in South Africa after our brief week excursion into Lesotho.

First of all, congrats to Jill on unknowingly answering correctly the question from last week's entry. Give yourself a nice pat on the back Mrs. Hall! No relation to Arsenio.

In our travels around the world in the last 8 1/2 months, we have been pretty good at not losing things until recently, and now all-losing chaos has struck. It started it when I lost a homemade bookmark made by my good friend Rene in Peru. It is now floating somewhere in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. Then, I lost my French Bible from Hermano Domingo, also from Peru. I don't believe I have any other items with me from Peru. Then in China, I lost my sunglasses after playing basketball in Yangshuo. Wait a minute, I had those with me in Peru 5 years ago. Uh oh, I'm beginning to see a pattern. Somewhere along the way I lost a Nalgene water bottle. Not an easy item to misplace and it was the only one with duct tape around the midsection. No more using the multipurpose duct tape now. Not sure if I had that in Peru. After returning from Macau, Nadine mistakenly left her knife on board with some food provisions. Pretty sure neither had been in Peru, but if had been, that food would be pretty difficult to chew. Better door stop than digestive value. Finally, this has never been in Peru unless it was made there, a towel. Not sure what it is, but I am beginning to lose things. If I come back to the U.S. without Nadine, it's because she has been to Peru three times and mistakenly misplaced her somewhere in one of our hostel rooms. Keep your fingers crossed.

Hanging out again

Now imagine this scenario, two little girls go to kindergarden together for a year and a half. They become best friends and go to birthday parties arm in arm. Then one of these two girls moves off to a far away land. Sad, I know, pull out the hankerchief if you need it, but the short story must go on.

9 years later sitting at a high school lunch table in a new city, two young adolescent girls look at each other and ask, "did you go to Annunciation Elementary School back in Minneapolis?" The other responds, "yeah, what's it to ya?" (adds a little extra drama) And they both realize they were best friends back in Minnesota where mosquitoes are bigger than the average New Mexican graduating class. And from this point on, these two girls have been friends. Who are these two girls? It's Nadine, my wife, and Melissa, not my wife. We do have a history. We travelled together back in the summer of 2001 around Europe with mixed results, but we are back at in again here in South Africa running around the coast.

Back when we first started planning this trip, we originally planned on going to India after Asia, but due to the fact that Melissa was going to be in Durban completeing a medical rotation, we changed our route for South Africa. A very interesting fact about Durban is that it houses the largest Indian population in the world outside of India. Great to know if you have a hankering for some Indian curry. Don't eat too much of it though, your belly bloats like a jellyfish stuck on the seashore.

We met up with Melissa at Ushaka, a combo of Sea World and a water park. Melissa and Nadine had a moviesque, running across concrete steps, imagine a wheat field though, into a big fat hug. From that point, you would have thought I was a mute, far from it in reality, but as a passerby you might have thought so, as they walked and chat, chat, chatting about everything possible. I faithfully walked along side them just listening and observing.

Ushaka itself was a great place to visit, even better if you get there early enough to get a free ticket. First half of the day we spent running around the acquarium watching penguins wobble around so that they could be fed a whole sardine. The highlight was circling a tank with large, eat-you-in-one-bite circling sharks. There was also a really ugly fish that looks just like a grumpy old man with the typical extra large nose and droppy lips. Didn't notice if there were large hairs sticking out of its' ears.

The second half of the day, and defintely the most fun, less educational part of the day, was at the water park. Unlike the water parks back home, the lines on every single slide were much shorter with a shorter wait time, 12 seconds on average. This giving you plenty of time to ride each ride several hundred times if you had the stamina. I tried my best to ride each slide a dozen times, while the girls had a different strategy, talk and talk and talk floating in the lazy river.

We did take a chance to see another part of South Africa as we ran over to Port Shepstone for 24 hours. From Port Shepstone, we trucked it over to the Oribi Gorge. This gorge holds an extremely large and deep rope swing down 300 feet into the space below. We roamed around the edge of the gorge posing for dangerous looking pics that would make any mother cringe which you can now enjoy on this blog. Try to stifle your ooohhh's and aaahhh's.

After a day in Port Shepstone, we were back in Durban lazing at our hostel working on my surfing skills within the realm of a swimming pool. We decided to spend the rest of the week relaxing waiting for Melissa to finish the last day of her medical rotation.

This week's question with an estimated value of a South African postcard - Where is the world's longest bungee jump and how long is it? More importantly, can you do it for free?

Life is good and we hope all are well.

JW