Steve and Cathy's Blog

We awaken in our gorgeous room around 7:00. Cathy points out that a beautiful sunrise is in progress, and we take a couple of pictures. Then it’s time to get ready for the day and have breakfast. We eat a gourmet breakfast in sumptuous surroundings. There is everything possible available, and then some. Our waitperson Penny gives us the lowdown on the various stations at this endless buffet. Cathy, after asking our friend Kreg for additional direction, orders eggs over easy with “health bread” (yummy dark seedy nutty) toast. [Oysters Bienville were on the menu, but believe it or not I just couldn’t eat any more rich food! So sad.] Steve is directed outside to an additional station where he orders a waffle.

Eventually we have had enough food, so we wander back the room to complete packing and call to have our bag brought to the lobby. We go there, meet up with the rest of our travel companions, and check out. As we complete this process, in comes bright and cheerful Shiny. Reluctantly, we bid farewell to the Oyster Box Hotel and climb into the bus. Our luggage is placed in a small, enclosed trailer towed by the bus. Very handy.

Shiny has been in touch with her counterpart at the dock where Insignia has arrived. The ship has arrived a few minutes later than anticipated and must still complete customs formalities, so we will not be able to board her until after 10am. This gives us an additional thirty to forty-five minutes with Ms. Bright, who offers to give us a quick tour of the city.

We have been staying about twenty minutes from the center of the city, and on the way, our guide tells us about some of the recent retail development in the area. The “sugar barons,” as she refer to the owners of the sugar companies, are now putting money into retail and hotel developments. She points out some of them, and also one of the five casinos located here in Durban. She then goes on to give us a brief history. The city is relatively new, having been established as a trading station by ex-Royal Navy officers James King and Francis George Farewell in 1823, who were hunters and traders in ivory. Here is what followed, according to one source: “In 1824 Lt. Farewell together with a trading company called J. R. Thompson & Co. decided to open trade relations with Shaka the Zulu King and establish a trading station at the Bay. Henry Francis Fynn, another trader at Delagoa Bay was also involved in this venture.  Fynn left Delagoa Bay and sailed for The Bay of Natal on the brig “Julia” while Farewell followed six weeks later on the “Antelope.” Between them they had 26 possible settlers, but only 18 stayed. On a visit to King Shaka, Henry Francis Fynn was able to befriend the King by helping him recover from a stab wound suffered as a result of an assassination attempt by one of his half-brothers. As a token of Shaka’s gratitude, he granted Fynn a “25-mile strip of coast a hundred miles in depth.” On 7 August 1824 they concluded negotiations with King Shaka for a cession of land, including the Bay of Natal and land extending ten miles south of the Bay, twenty-five miles north of the Bay and one hundred miles inland.”

In the 1850s, British immigrants, many of them Scottish, arrived in the area, and sugar began to be grown, the original plants being brought in from India and Mauritius. The climate was ideal for this crop with adequate rain and much sun.

But what the growers needed that they didn’t have was labor, as sugar is a labor-intensive crop. Slavery having been outlawed decades ago, the idea originally was to employ Zulu men. Interestingly, this idea was a bust because, in Zulu society, work in agriculture was considered women’s work, while men herd the cattle and fight. So the sugar farmers turned to India, another British colony where sugar was being grown.

150,000 people were brought in from India from 1860 to 1900 as indentured workers under five-year contracts, after which they were given the choice to stay or be sent home. Many decided to stay, in part because the caste system in India relegated them to poverty, so this seemed the better option. Other Indians from the north of the country, referred to as “passenger Indians” because they actually paid their own way to come, arrived to start businesses in the new coal fields as well. Thus, to this day, there are 600,000 people of Indian descent living in KwaZulu Natal province, the largest population of Indians outside of India itself.

So it is said that sugar built Durban, but there were other reasons the city grew. When gold was discovered in the Johannesburg area in 1884, Durban was the logical place to land the machinery and other supplies needed. Then coalmines opened in Newcastle and Dundee, and the port grew in importance. Today Durban is the largest port in Africa (not just South Africa) by volume, with 80 million tons passing through annually.

The reasons for this volume are various. Sugar is one. Twenty million tons annually are shipped from Durban. Proximity to Johannesburg, the industrial heart of South Africa, is another. Automobiles are a third. There are at least four assembly plants whose products are exported through Durban. Used Japanese cars are imported through Durban, but they are all bound for Zimbabwe as South Africa prohibits their sale in order to protect the domestic new car market. And the harbor is also an enormous container port as well.

Shiny Bright is telling us all this while taking us through the fanciest residential area of the city, the home of the sugar barons. This is, as you might expect, on the highest hills in the city, which are actually fossilized sand dunes, the highest vegetative sand dunes in the world. 3.5 – 4 million people live in metro Durban, 80% of whom are Zulu. As mentioned above, many, many people of Indian descent reside here as well, while whites are a small minority.

We come down out of the hills on Florida Road, which is the Camps Bay of Durban, Camps Bay being the Cape Town neighborhood full of bars, restaurants and other yuppie haunts. We next travel through the Indian market section, which is teeming with small stores and innumerable stands selling just about anything you could want or need. Apparently, this bustling retail center draws people in profusion from the rural areas of the province. When asked if this is a safe area for us to go, Shiny tells us that it is, primarily because of the “street justice” enforcement by the Zulu residents. Any miscreant that attempts to steal or mug or whatever is very likely to be dealt with quite harshly. Police are rarely needed.

Finally it is time for Shiny Bright to deliver us to the ship. We arrive around 10-10:30 and still the ship has not been totally cleared by “the local authorities.” So we say goodbye to our guide and wait on the dock with Insignia General Manager Damien. I overhear part of an interesting conversation he is having with Kreg about this delay.

Perhaps not specific to this particular delay, Damien speaks to a problem that all the cruise lines have faced in the past: local officials demanding bribes to expedite clearance into a port. Apparently, this practice was very common, so the cruise lines formed a pact among themselves that none of them would accede to these attempted bribes. They have been very successful in stopping the practice, although there are still attempts to extort money, hence some delays while the “local officials” try to play games and the cruise ship officers educate them that it ain’t gonna happen.

We finally board the boat as hundreds of people are leaving for their excursions. Ours is at 1:15, so we unpack, have a quick lunch and set out on our Durban City Tour four-hour excursion with another delightful guide whose name I failed to write down. We will be making four stops, and in between those stops, we are given a flood of interesting information on dozens of subjects.

I will now go into Random Fact mode by consulting my notes:

• The province is now called KwaZulu Natal. Natal was the name Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama gave to the bay where present-day Durban harbor is. He named it Natal because he was here on Christmas Day.
• There is quite a bit of art deco architecture in the city. In fact, it is called Miami-style art deco as it reflects the same style as that city has in such abundance.
• Durban is, and I quote our guide, a “laid back city” due to the subtropical climate, especially in the heat and humidity of the summer. There is a local expression “Just now,” which means “I’ll get to it,” but that can mean two seconds or two years.
• As we traverse the city, our guide and her bus driver have to converse frequently as to their direction. The City Council has been renaming streets from their colonial names to names of prominent Zulu and other black leaders and place names. They have done this to over one hundred streets in the city in a very short period of time, which has led to considerable confusion for most residents, including bus drivers and guides.
• The school system is very British in that school uniforms must be worn by every student. Everyone attends, and uniforms will be provided if a parent cannot afford to buy them. There is a strong emphasis on education now, especially for the black majority, who were denied education under apartheid.
• The school system has seven primary grades and five secondary grades. Boys and girls attend separate schools as it is believed to foster a better education with fewer distractions. One very complicating factor is that there are eleven official languages in South Africa, and every student has the right to be educated in his or her native language. [And we bitch about Spanish? But it probably provides a lot of jobs for teachers.]
• The Indian leader Mahatma Ghandi actually began his career as a resistance leader in Durban. He was practicing law here and had purchased a first class train ticket to the provincial capital by mail order. He boarded the train and sat in the first class section. One of the white people complained. Ghandi was told to move and refused, at which point he was tossed off the train in the middle of nowhere. It was at that point that he began his career of passive resistance to the racial and ethnic discrimination that dominated this period. He lived in Durban for a total of twenty-one years.
• Durban is a hilly city due to the aforementioned fossilized sand dunes.
• The city has many parks, and all are very popular places on the weekends, with picnics being the primary activity.
• Sports are big in South Africa in general and Durban specifically. Soccer is a sport supported by everyone – black, white, Indian, whomever. Cricket is the other popular sport, but it is mostly of interest to the English and Indian populations. There is also a professional rugby team named the Sharks, and they have named their stadium the Shark Tank.
• Durban is one of the busiest holiday destinations in South Africa due to 1) its mild year-round climate and 2) its proximity to the inland cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria that are only 400 miles away. December is customarily a holiday month. Our guide strongly recommends that when we return to Durban, we do not come in December as the city is packed.
• The city has eight kilometers of beaches that are loved by all Durbanites, especially for swimming, surfing (especially at North Beach) and kayaking. The currents are strong as is the surf. There is an organization that maintains shark nets at these beaches as there is an abundance of these creatures due to the warm temperature of the water (23 degrees Celsius).
• The region has a serious unemployment problem, which is officially pegged at 30%. This is a residual problem of the apartheid era. It was considered unnecessary to educate the black population, as they would serve as the unskilled workforce for the nation. As in the rest of the world, there is much less demand for unskilled labor, and now the country faces a critical shortage of those with technical skills. Sound familiar?

Okay, well that takes care of much of the information about the city that we received as we trotted around this beautiful city. Now here are the four stops we made:

1. Victoria Street Market: This is an enormous indoor market in the Indian section of town that has two stories of shops. It is packed with locals and We spend about forty-five minutes there. Cathy needs to find a pair of scissors for her knitting and needlepoint work as hers were confiscated by airport security in Johannesburg. We ask two or three different people and are given very vague answers. She spies a little kiosk that sells cell phone covers and such and asks where she might obtain scissors. Being a very enterprising young man, the proprietor digs around and find a pair – his. He wants R48 (about $4), which is a ripoff but Cathy needs them and says okay. Deal is made and Cathy is delighted to have them.

Then we go to a spice store recommended by our guide because the Indian gentleman that owns the store is very entertaining and the products he sells are authentic and reasonably priced. We are there for about fifteen minutes, and he definitely lives up to the advance billing. He is a born salesman, makes instant friends with his customers, and teaches us quite a bit in a short amount of time. By the time we leave, we have spent R615, which is about US$50. It’s worth it. We got quite a bit of stuff.

We wander around for a while and purchase one gift at a very reasonable price with no haggling. At this point, Cathy has had enough of the crowds and wants to spend our last twenty minutes back on the tour bus. Steve, however, is not at all done looking around. While Cathy stands by the entrance, I shop. I am after an African shirt for myself, possibly the only thing I really, really want. I go into a store and am immediately met by the storekeeper. After a couple of minutes, he shows me just what I want. He says “R250.” I say “No, R200.” He is not pleased but we settle for R200 (about $17). I’m all kinds of proud of myself, but I still probably didn’t get the lowest price I could. Nevertheless, I am happy to have haggled, something to which I am not at all accustomed.

2. Durban Botanical Garden: We have been allocated an hour to tour this tranquil, beautiful park, and we begin by being led around by our very informative guide. After twenty minutes or so, Cathy sees a wooden bench by a beautiful pool with ducks and a pelican and she convinces Steve to just sit and relax with her as the group continues their tour (The photo at the beginning of this post are two ducks relaxing at the pond just like Cathy and Steve). What a good idea. Not only do we get to watch and photograph the birds, but also across the pond is a family of five or six lively monkeys that provide great entertainment. It is a very pleasant interlude. [At this point I was wondering if it had been a mistake to sign up for this tour because we were so exhausted from our four days of luxury, but this quiet interlude in the park was helpful; and we did want to see the city.]
3. Overview of Durban: We are next taken up one of the hills of the city and stop so that we can photograph the skyline and get a sense of the enormity of the area. This is a very vibrant and growing city. Our guide continues to discuss the evolution of race relations in the city. During apartheid all the residential hills were reserved for white people, but now the neighborhoods are mixed. Obviously, economics plays into the racial mix, but at least there are no legal barriers as there once were. Progress is indeed being made, although that progress is never going to be as rapid as most would like. There is a real effort to embrace change here in this city.
4. Moses Mashida Stadium: Our last stop is made to photograph this impressive soccer stadium built for the 2010 World Cup competition, which was held in six South African cities. While it was built to hold 54,000 spectators, it can be modified to accommodate 72,000. That modification is highly unlikely, however. These stadiums, built by the national government, were turned over to local governments after the World Cup, and have become a money pit despite efforts to diversify the events held at these stadiums.

The place is a real architectural masterpiece. The roof is held up by an enormous arch with a cable car on one side leading to a viewing area at the top. 550 stairs lead to this same viewing area on the other side of the arch.

It is now time to return to the ship. We pass by one of the most popular beach areas. The surf is tremendous, and surfers congregate there in the mornings and late afternoons. Our guide notes that many of the hotels and large apartment buildings facing the ocean all were built in the 60s and 70s when the local economy was booming, which is why they seem to be from some kind of bygone era.

She also mentions that there is whale watching during part of the year. The whales come down from the Arctic (yes, she did say Arctic) to calve every year.

We are delivered to our ship around 5:30, and are due to sail in a few hours for Richards Bay, our last stop in South Africa. We are deliriously tired at this point, so we hit the Terrace Café. And, as Cathy states, we just physically cannot use a knife and fork to put additional food into our mouths. We are sated, so we opt for sushi only. And wine (Steve). And sorbet (Cathy).   Needless to say, it’s beddie-by time right after that.