This year Chase and I decided that instead of throwing birthday parties for the kids we would celebrate by taking trips and exploring more of this amazing country! Spencer and Chase's birthdays just happen to be four days apart so we decided to celebrate their 3rd and 30th this year at the beach! About seven hours from Pretoria is the popular beach town of Durban, outside of Durban along he coast are several other smaller beach towns that are also popular places to stay. Our good friends Chuck and Mandy came along with us on the trip and we found a beach front house in an area called Umdloti that fit us all! The boys do great on car rides and so the journey there was easy. It was much like driving through Kansas to Denver with a few Mountains in the mix.
About an hour outside of Durban is an area called The Meander, which is full of rolling hills and lots of small artisan shops. It's a great place to stop if you have time to look for pottery, artwork, or as Chase found out for us wind chimes. We stopped at a shop on the side of a small mountain known for their hand made wind chimes. The shop is about the size of a large two car garage and you can hear the chimes ringing as you drive up. It's owned by the nicest gentleman who can tell you all about each chime and the sounds they make. When I went to pay I found they do not accept credit cards and he simply said that "it's alright, because people are in too big a rush these days", and he wrote me an invoice to pay when I got back to pretoria. I told him that was very trusting, but thanked him for being so accommodating.
The Meander is also known for the famous Nelson Mandela capture site, the place in which he was captured before serving his 27 years in prison. Now the site is home to a beautiful sculpture that was put up at the 50th anniversary of his capture. The sculpture is made of 50 steal poles and set at the end of a brick path that symbolizes the "long walk to freedom". Along the path 30 meters from the sculpture you can stop and see the image of Nelson Mandela's head. I thought this sculpture was really impressive it took a lot of careful planning and thought to make it fit together so well.
Once we got to our house it was nothing but relaxation and beach time! Chase and Chuck got to play a round of golf while Mandy and I spent time on the beach with the kids. We were only there for two full days, so it was a lot of sand and good food. I ordered a cake from the local coffee shop to take with us and the first night there we ate at a seaside restaurant and sang happy birthday to the boys! The house was perfect it was situated on the beach, had a fabulous braii area, and even a pool (though it was too chilly to swim in it). Even though it is the middle of winter, the day temperatures and the ocean water were both warm enough to enjoy, and because it's off season the beach and restaurants weren't busy at all. Where we were the Ocean was pretty rough, there were a lot of waves and rocks especially at the beach outside our house. However, walking distance from our house there was a spot along the beach with a large tide pool protected from the waves by larger rocks. This made for a perfect swimming spot, and when the tide was out we could go and climb along the rocks and look for sea life such a coral and urchins.
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| The boys LOVED having Mandy and Chuck around to play with them! |
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| Sunrise from our deck |
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| Mitchell asked to be buried in the sand... he couldn't stop giggling! |
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| Looking for sea life! |
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| Dad telling Mitchell about the different creatures and looking for crabs! |
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| Coral |
We all agreed it was a great trip and have added it to our list of repeat vacations!
