Razor wire and vervet attacks

Durban is...... rough. We're both totally glad we got to see the city, but we're excited to be heading to Cape Town tomorrow. Our hotel is so awesome that it's shocking it's in Durban. It's old world charm (aka British colonialism) on a small, terraced piece of land. We have a pool, decks, courtyards (one off our room) and a self serve 'honesty' bar that Trish and I are loving (surprise, surprise):

Our room is pretty cool:

It's also completely gated off, with razor wire and an electric fence, and a 24 hr security guard. So, yeah..... that's Durban for ya. We had originally planned on wandering around the city on our own, but after getting here - helllllllll no. It's like Tijuana but way scarier, and there are no Americans, just a very small amount of white people that I'm not positive are racist or not (sorry mom, I know I'm scaring you right now). 

But the Indian food is beyond belief. Like seriously the best thing we've ever eaten (except for pho).

Everything in the guidebook says to not venture out after dark, and it gets dark here at about 5:30/6pm. Luckily Vincent (the hotel manager who does basically everything here and is awesome) snagged some Indian food for us last night. Durban has the largest Indian population of any city outside of India, and is where Mohandas Ghandi spent a lot of his life. As you can imagine, this adds even another layer to the cultural melting pot here. Though I'm not sure how much of a melting pot it is. Overall the different ethnic groups seem to get along, but they pretty much stick to themselves. To put it bluntly there are virtually no people of mixed race - you're African (Zulu primarily), Indian, or European/Afrakaaner. 

Today we headed out to the Golden Mile - Durban's holiday coast, very much like Venice Beach. Trish swam in the poop water (the ecoli and echinococcosis ratings were only 'moderate' so hopefully she doesn't get pink eye) but I was lame and did not. Here she is:

And here is some cool sand art:

The black sand you can see in the rhino sticks to your feet and is freaky looking!

Then we did a 3 hour double decker bus tour. The speaker system was shitty though, so we had to make up a lot of the narration ourselves ;) 

The highlight of the day was sitting by the pool watching a vervet monkey run past Trish. As we watched it disappear another one lept over her shoulder (shortcut!) chasing after the other one. No pictures of the vervets ;( 

Tonight is gin and tonics and more Indian food at the hotel. Tomorrow we're gonna go on a boat tour to find sharks then we're heading to Cape Town!!