I just got back from Durban this week, what an amazing weekend! It was my 21st birthday on Thursday so we went out and celebrated on Wednesday, and I spent the actual birthday going to class and sitting on a bus. We rode about 12 hours through the night and then walked a few miles to the hostel, Banana Backpackers. This place was an old converted building with a huge open air courtyard in the middle, and it had a lot just for being a hostel. I'd recommend it to anyone and it was only about $10 a night.

We spent Friday going to the beach and getting in the Indian Ocean for the first time, and then went out to dinner at this really good Italian place, probably the best food we had in Durban and certainly stuff you can't get in Grahamstown. Saturday was crazy, we went to the beach in the morning and then left to goto the rugby match about 2 or 3 hours before kickoff. We ended up walking the whole way there, probably about 5 miles, most of it down the median of the highway with some Australians, then cutting through a broken fence and walking across the construction site where the world cup stadium is being built for 2010.

That stadium is going to be spectacular, brand new for the world cup and it looks like it's coming along, although I'm still worried about South Africa hosting the world cup. The ABSA stadium, where the game was, was pretty different to American stadia. It was constructed to be really steep so all of the seats were really decent. While it wasn't as big as an American one, there was no bowl-type quality to it. The game itself wasn't amazing but there were several tries late on and Australia won 27-15, with South Africa getting booed off at the end after losing 3 straight matches.

After that we hit the town again, saw some fireworks, and then went to bed to get up at 6:00 the next morning. We drove about 3 hours to the Drakensburg Mountains, where we had a local Zulu guide take us on a 6 hour hike through the country. The mountains there were pretty enormous, we saw some cave paintings that were anywhere from 2000 to 10000 years old, and also saw some baboons and boks there. It was amazingly beautful, there's such an expanse of natural beauty in this country.

That pretty much took up the whole day and then it was up again at 5:30 the next morning to catch another bus, this time it was Greyhound and a lot nicer than the other bus we took. That got us back about 7:30 that night and after watching about 6 straight hours of Prison Break at one point I was ready to get off the bus. Two of our friends from Princeton, Ed and Ryan, left to go back to the US the next day and had to hop on another 12 hour bus ride to Cape Town the very next day.

All in all, it was a really good trip, a great 21st weekend. Hopefully I'll be heading to Cape Town soon, but I'll post pictures of my trip later in the week.