Durban Trip: Part 1

I’m back from holiday! I spent the last 8 days traveling in the Drakensburg Mountains and sightseeing in Durban, a major city on the eastern side of South Africa. The entire time was AMAZING, and too much to write in one blog entry, so I’m gonna break it down (*side note: I know I break the cardinal rule of blogging, which is to not make each post very long or else you’ll lose your audience, but I don’t really have this to be a “bloggie”, but rather for me to keep my family and whoever is interested up to date, and for myself to look back on).

I flew into Durban Friday night, and immediately went and got some curry and Naan. Durban has the largest population of Indians outside of India, and thus good Indian! On Saturday morning, Sarah, myself, and two other girls drove up to Sarah’s family holiday house in the Drakensburg Mountains with her family. For the next 4 days, this was our schedule: we’d be up and out by 7:30, 8 a.m. after having a huge and delicious breakfast. One day we tubed down a river, another day we hiked (separate blog entry), and another day we Foofy-slided (again, another entry). We would walk to the dams and streams and waterfalls just exploring as well. Come lunch time (1 pm), we’d have a massive yummy lunch, as the humidity brought in a big thunderstorm. We then would all sleep during the storm. We’d wake up, have afternoon tea and a session that Sarah’s mother put together for us to just read the Bible and pray. We would read our books, then come 7 at night have a big meal by candlelight because it was already dark up in the mountains. It got quite chilly at night, and we’d read our books by the fire at night, then be in bed by 9, 9:30…it was awesome! We were so remote, the only way I kept some track of the time was by our meals…I didn’t look at a phone, computer screen, or watch for 4 days.

One night, however, the sky was very clear, and us girls wrapped up in blankets and laid out under the stars, too many to count, and so beautiful. Definitely one of those times that will stand out about my time here. At one point we heard baboons down the stream, and we almost got carried away thinking about the baboons coming up and ruining our peaceful evening by attacking us! We laid there and talked about promises God had over our lives, what dreams He had given us, what we thought the next few years of our future would like. We then moved inside and had a really good time of praying for each one of us, giving each other pictures and words we had for one another. It was all really good…more to come!