Midlands Meandering, 21-24 May

A week before heading to France for the summer, I surprised Roy on his birthday with a three-night getaway to the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, just a 90-minute drive from Umhlanga Rocks and Durban.

Just between you and me, I wasn’t sure how welcome it was – to start with, anyway.

My man seems quite content to while away the days on our balcony, occasionally lifting his eyes from his Kindle to survey the Indian Ocean, assess the shipping situation, contemplate the lighthouse, or call me from one of my various pursuits to admire a pod of passing dolphins.

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Decaying Durban?

No one we know goes into Durban’s rundown CBD by choice anymore. Except, that is, for my 85-year-old mother who still takes a combi taxi into town from her home in Musgrave Road once a month to have her hair done. (Cue horrified gasps.) She’s made of sterner stuff than I.

The featured image above is of the Playhouse theatre in Smith Street.

Back in the seventies and eighties, a favourite Friday night outing for the family would be “window-shopping” down West and Smith Streets – especially in the weeks before Christmas, but not only then. The shops closed at 5pm, but you could buy an ice-cream cone and stroll past the brightly lit window displays of department stores like Greenacres and Stuttafords (later Garlicks), Durban Wholesale Jewellers and other flourishing retailers.

Heading up Smith Street to Broad Walk  – in the distance you can just see the tower of the University of KZN’s Howard College, my alma mater, if you know where to look

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Ode to Autumn – in Durban

Weather-wise, May has to be the month to visit Durban. It’s not necessarily the best time to see the rest of the country, though: in the artistic KZN Midlands, they’re already wearing crocheted garments and huddling around artisanal log fires.

In the Cape, they’re opening yet another vyf-man-kan (five-litre box) of red, battening down the hatches against the wintry storms and praying for more of that cold rain to fill their direly depleted dams.

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South Pacific Cruise – Part Five: Two Wet Islands

Fiji’s Dravuni Island and New Caledonia’s Maré Island were the last two stops of the cruise – and as luck would have it, the one was wetter than the other. Never mind! Tropical waters are warm, and so is tropical rain.

Bula, Dravuni Island!

The tender stops at a pier that is specially assembled before Cruise Day and then taken apart afterwards

I’m not sure whether the clouds, drizzle and eventual steady afternoon rain were a blessing or a curse: on the positive side, there were fewer cases of geriatric sunburn.

There’s no electricity here, and no cars; and, according to Heather from the shore excursion  team, “they’re as fascinated by us as we are by them”. This is billed as the true remote Fijian island experience.

It’s a fair way from ship to shore, as you can see here

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South Pacific Cruise – Part Four: Lautoka, Fiji

In Fiji,“Bula” means hello, and always gets a smile! Located on Viti Levu, Fiji’s largest island, Lautoka is also known as Sugar City. Like my home town Durban, its important Indian population descends from indentured labourers brought in during the second half of the nineteenth century to work in the sugarcane fields.

 

Once again, the Noordam is berthed in a container port

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South Pacific Cruise – Part Three: Vanuatu

Waking up in Vanuatu’s Port Vila to a sight like this, no wonder I was itching to go ashore. In retrospect, I’d say this was the best stop on the Noordam’s South Pacific Island itinerary.

What a view to wake up to!

As you step off the gangway, you either go right to join one of the ship’s organised tours, or left to enter a market maze. Haggling is not part of the culture here: the price you see is the price you pay.

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South Pacific Cruise – Part Two: Nouméa and Lifou

 

Annexed by the French in the 1840s and established as a penal colony, New Caledonia (or Nouvelle-Calédonie) is part of the French collectivity, and feels like a slice of France in the middle of the South Pacific.

Day 4: Nouméa

After two full days at sea, we woke up – that’s never too early, with Roy – to find ourselves moored at Nouméa, New Caledonia’s capital city, on Grand Terre island. Many of our 1,800-odd fellow passengers on the Noordam were already up, breakfasted, and streaming ashore.

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South Pacific Cruise – Part One: Sail away from Sydney

After almost three lovely months with the family in Perth WA, Roy and I were ready for our 15-28 March getaway – a 13-night cruise on the HAL (Holland America Line) Noordam, round trip from Sydney to the South Pacific and back.

The Noordam – second time around

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Ferry to Rottnest Island

My Roy can be hard to pin down when he doesn’t want to do something. The mouth says: yes, sure, let’s do that sometime. But the eyes – and sometimes a slight twitch in the right eyebrow – say: no, I don’t think so, probably never.

That’s how it’s been about Rottnest Island, located just off Perth, WA. I’d been trying to get there for the past four years, and it just wasn’t happening.

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