31/1/2011

A decent sleep for once before we headed to a mall to get some jobs done. I ended up having a severe haircut, the first one I have had done by someone other than my barber Uncle in my whole life. The black local who did it was useless. I was in there for almost two hours and when I cam out I just had my hair really short, two on the sides and three on top.

I asked him to use scissors for the top but he even asked if he could use a shaver as he obviously had no bloody clue how to use them and when he tried using them he was shocking. I could see that I would be in here the whole day unless I told him to get the shaver back out. To be fair, he was a lovely chap and he tried very hard - I mean he even cleaned up my dodgy beard which wasn't trimmed properly by my gradually-falling-apart shaver. But hairdressing wasn't the trade for him or maybe he's used to just doing afros and short-do's for the black guys and I'm just some white ponce! He thought I wanted to look like a punk to start with and was making me look like a peacock or something. It was worrying and when Jack and Mike came past they were in hysterics! £3 was a bargain though.

Because it took so long, we needed to get a move on so we paid our bill at Tekweni's and set off on foot to the station. I looked like a proper soldier or marine or something by now as we popped into KFC for some snacks.

Sweaty and getting restless, we were directed for buses to Pietermaritzburg all over the shop. Eventually we found one though and Mike was chatting up some pretty dark local but couldn't spell her name. Pietermaritzburg is the home of Kevin Pietersen but it was hard to believe with the population of Zulus there.

Some loco local wanted to get us on his bike and take us to buses but we dived in a taxi to avoid him and caught the last bus to Underberg. It was a scenic route up towards the Drakensberg mountains seeing valleys, rivers, red skies at dusk and small communities. At our stop we fuelled up on food to take and caught another small minibus taxi to Sani Pass Lodge. All-in-all, we had done quite well to spend only £13 on travel when we would have paid almost three times the price with the Baz bus. It's not so bad on local transport and the guys didn't find it too bad although Jack hates it. Whenyou have each other's company it's a bit of a laugh and much easier and I've found this the easiest way to save some dollar.

Sani Pass Lodge was nice up in the mountains with all the facilities fairly good.

We chilled in the lounge area until late chatting and I rang Grandma to wish her a happy anniversary.