St Lucia

On the Monday (2nd April), we spent the morning looking around the shops in St Lucia, and in the afternoon we went on a boat around the estuary, where you can see hippos and crocs, as well as a variety of birds.
The next day we drove up to Sodwana Bay, which is supposed to be a very secluded quiet beach. Instead the beach was full of people who had driven onto the sand in 4x4s and set up gazebos. We looked pitiful perched on our towels between them. Shortly before we left, we went for a walk along the beach, only to discover a section of beach that was completely deserted.

Wednesday we decided to go to the beach at St Lucia. We were just starting down the road to the beach when a man in a pickup offered us a lift.
We discovered, as he drove us, that the beach road is about 3 miles long, so we were fortunate. We weren't at the beach long as the weather turned bad. We began the walk home and were offered another lift, which dropped us right outside where we were staying. Riding in the rain is actually pretty fun.

Thursday morning we left and drove down to the Drakensburg.

Sadly I forgot to take my camera with me every time we went out in St Lucia. I'll hopefully get some copies from Katherine.

South Africa Part 1 - Outward Bound

I'm going to split this into sections, for easy readability.

First up, the journey there.

Esther and I met Katherine at Heathrow on 31st March.

We flew Iberia, via Madrid, to Johannesburg, uneventfully. However, the food was awful, you had to pay for it on the short haul flight, and the meals on the main flight were manky - grey chicken for dinner, nasty looking cold meat for breakfast.
And the flight attendants were grumpy. And old. Hollywood lied to me.

We arrived in SA late, and we rushed from the international terminal to the domestic, to be told our connecting South African flight had closed. The man then tried to check us onto the next flight, only to discover the tickets we had were blacklisted.

We originally bought our tickets from MAS Travel, who took money from people, issued tickets, then ran off to Pakistan with the money, without paying the airlines. In December, Iberia contacted us about it, and they honoured the tickets, issuing new e-tickets, including the last leg with SAA.

However, SAA blacklisted the tickets without telling us, and we were forced to buy new tickets to Durban, hopefully we can claim back from the travel insurance.

We got on a later flight, picked up the hire car, and I drove the 300KM from Durban to St Lucia in one hit, arriving at about 7pm on the Sunday.

Morals to the story:

Beware of cheap tickets from small travel agents
Don't fly Iberia
Don't travel on April 1st

Easter Holiday

2 more days, then I'm off to South Africa with my girlfriend and one of her friends.

We're starting off by visiting St Lucia, then the Drakensburg mountains, with a day trip to Lesotho, then finishing with a visit to Lily of the Valley childrens home, where the girls spent 6 months as volunteers.

I'll try to add updates, and photos when we're out there.

Testing mobile posting

Apparently, you can set up your blog to receive posts sent from an email
address.
This was sent from my mobile, if it works, it's pretty cool.

The signature it places at the bottom is annoying though.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .

2 Weeks, 1 Day

I've been lacking in time for updates recently, due to workload.

And laziness, in all honesty.

Today I made my appointment for my jabs, ahead of our trip to South Africa, on the 31st.

I'm now getting really excited about it.

I'll post more details of what we're doing later.

u hs ovastayd yr wlcom...

Texts to deter illegal migrants


They have some batty schemes. This is but one. I only hope they don't mess it up.

Knowing the govt, they'll probably text a bunch of WWII veterans by mistake.

I love this bit:

¨Home Secretary John Reid said the new policy would make life "uncomfortable and constrained" for illegal entrants.¨

Just wait for them to sue because the texts contravened their human rights by making them miserable.

Weekend Away

I had the pleasure of spending the last weekend at The Frontier Centre with the 18-30 group from my home church. We looked at Genesis, focusing on the Creation, Abraham and Joseph. 50 chapters is a lot for 3 sessions, but it was handled very well. In our free time a group of us, undeterred by mud and floods, made our way to an adventure playground we'd discovered last year in the dark. Wasn't quite as good with little kids in the way, but still.

I stayed home Sunday night, and left at 6am to drive back to uni for a 9am lecture. Made it by 8.30, had a shower, then rushed over to the campus, only to find we didn't have a lecture. Infuriating.

I'm up late, working on an ICT assignment which involves creating a browser based tutorial for Yr7 kids, to teach basic database functions. If my tutor agrees, I'll upload it for people to test out the links, iron the kinks* and generally comment on it.

At least the party animals seem to have all passed out, so I'm undisturbed

* pure poetry, even at this time of the morning.