Aili's conference starts today and she and Gisela (our traveling companion once again) are doomed to a day of PowerPoint so I searched for the 'accompanying persons’ tour. Failing to find them, I walked across the street to the beach and around a small mangrove outcropping then up the coast to the Sun Coast Casino. It was only 8:30 in the morning and was pretty dead. Looks like this place has seen its prime about 15-20 years ago – perhaps it’s just the art deco architecture and faded paint job… Palapas lined the sand out front as sweet, peaky waves crested out front. As I walked back I saw a few surfers out launching down the overhead
waves. In California, there would be a hundred or more surfers in the water but here it looks like ten constitutes a crowd! The waves were literally PERFECT.

Back at the hotel, another spouse (Marjek from the Netherlands) and I were offered a trip to the local Gateway Mall on the way to the airport with a pick up about an hour later from the conference driver. The Gateway in Umhlanga (pronounced OOM-shlang-ga) was nice, new, clean and even has an "Action Sport" area including an 80 ft rock climbing wall, several artificial wave pools for surfing and body boarding and a whole wing of Roxy, Billibong, Quiksilver, Volcom and even a Channel Islands surfboard store – what is this, Orange County???

After our pickup, we were driven around town a bit by our driver, down the beach drive to the Point (don’t walk around here) to downtown past the harbor and marina areas, through downtown (don’t walk around here) to Victoria Market. There we stopped and perused the odd mix of spice shops, African art stalls, and kitchen supply stores – huh?. I picked up a great spice mix for a briaa (South African BBQ) and a cool Zulu mask. Our driver then took us back past the government buildings, down West street (don’t walk around here) then back up the beach to our hotel were we met up with the conference attendees.