Week 1 - The weekend

At the weekend me and the other 4 volunteers went to a Zulu village and experienced Zulu dancing. I'd seen this when I was in south africa in July, but it was done and explained in a different way and there weren't as many people watching, so it was much more personal.
We also took a short walk to a waterfall in the valley of 1000 hills and the gorge it had calved through the landscape was massive! I'm afraid you'll have to wait for pictures as the computer i'm using is not the fastest one in the world!!!
In the afternoon we went to an indian market, which sold lots of african crafts and after lunch, took a nice relaxing stroll down the beach, to the african street market. This is part what south africa is all about, walking along the beach, watching the sun go down and looking at the local craft. There were people along the beach who had made huge sand sculptures - I've only ever seen them on TV before and in the flesh they are much more impressive.

The sea was incredibly rough and the back set of waves were forming tubes. There were local surfers jumping off the end of the pier to get to them and there was one surfer that was taken out on a jet ski. The atmosphere on the pier was amazing - there were people fishing and everyone said hello and stopped for a chat. A lot of people presume that south africa is a very unsafe place to visit, which is can be, but it can also be a very enriching place to go - its very difficult to describe.

On sunday we spent the morning on the beach - the sea was still very rough and there was only a small strip in which you could swim, but that didn't stop me. The waves are so powerful here that you don't even need a body board to go body boarding, you just have to lunge forward and the wave does the rest. This was not the most sensible thing to do in a bikini and I almost lost it a few times, which was quite embarrassing.
On a sunday there is a flee market about half way down the beach, so after lunch we walked to it. There wasn't a huge amount there, but there were people selling spiced fruit, which gave the whole market a lovely smell. I have to try so hard not to buy things and I keep having to remind myself that what ever I buy I have to carry on my back for the next 5 months - This is not an easy task, as everything is sooooo cheap, but i'm not doing too badly.

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