Sunny coast and suncoast, oh mercy..

Last week had a mysterious touch to it.. We went to the office on Wednesday like we had agreed with our contact person. We merely "turned" there and heard that the next time we would meet, was the next Wednesday. One could call it a short week at work.. Well, it didn't take long for us to realize that the only reasonable thing to do, is to fill the car up with unleaded 93, and hit the road. Sunny Durban, here we come! 600 km to travel and sun gleaming in our retinas. Scenery en route was breathtaking.
Everything went well until our trusted navigator took the wheel. The sky was lit by the ominous flash of a traffic camera and some curses might have been heard. Well, cool as ice the navigator kept on driving. I reckon we'll be hearing from the rental agency sooner or later.. It was a nice 15 minutes of driving after that and, *SNAP*. Here we go again.. The leadfooted navigator had done it again. Going slowed down a bit after that.

Arriving to Durban seven hours later was not as glamorous as originally anticipated.. Fog and rain wasn't quite like the sun we had been looking forward to.. Luckily the lodge wasn't bad at all.
Patio overlooking the sea and airconditioned bedrooms, what we had been lacking in our place in Pretoria. Even thinking the scorching nights in the sixth circle of hell A.K.A. our guesthouse brings sweat to my eyebrows. We felt that it was our responsibility to check out the Suncoast Casino downtown on the Finnish independence day. What a patriotic act, I might say. Feeling proud being a Finn, we went to break the bank in the casino. And that's the end of that chapter.. We were back in our lodge at four thirty am and the undersigned went to bed dead tired, the rest of the crew went to see the sunrise to the beach, which was amazing believing what the guys said.
We went to see the marine world one day in Durban, and with cameras' memory cells filled with strange animals pictures, we went back to our car just to find it washed. Of course nothing is free in this world and we had to cough up 30 rand to please the shady "carwatch" person. The outrageous part is, that he insisted that we pay him 50 rand for his troubles of keeping an eye on our trusty carriage. It wasn't even him that washed the car.. "Is nice, everything number one, my friend, fifty rand.."

After being burned in the sun we started our journey back to Pretoria. Since we didn't exactly have any hurry back and we didn't want to drive back exactly the same highways and sceneries. We just should have left some hours earlier so we would have seen the new sceneries more clearly. Luckily the moonlight was very clear that night so it's wasn't completely as dark as pitch. We followed the route on the seacoast until Swaziland border and then drived thru many small towns of which most looked like Finnish small towns e.g. Askola:) Ermelo town was the one we found most western with 24Hr hamburger restaurant plus western style bars and street culture (on Monday night). After 12 hours and a thousand bathroomstops we were back in P-town safe and sound.

Today we went to NSN to work with another project, which started pretty well, I might add. Tomorrow we have an early wakeup, for we have to storm to the airport to catch a plane to Cape Town. More of that later, though..

-Arttu-