Goodbye, Dubai - Hello, Durban

A very crowded shuttle bus brought us from the Copthorne Hotel back to Dubai International Airport. There wasn't much to see en route, squashed midst other passengers. We cleared through Immigration and Security quickly and had a couple of hours to wait for our flight. A little internet, a cup of coffee and a walkabout and the on-time flight was ready to board.

As we departed Dubai, I couldn't help notice the brown cloud that hung over the city. It's not just LA  that sports a brown haze.

The flight was eight more hours of movies, iPad games, meals and naps and finally we were back in Durban. We could see the sweeping curve of the Durban shoreline as we made our approach at King Shaka Airport.

About 40 hours after leaving LAX, we stepped off the plane in Durban. It was warm and windy. The shuttle ride back to the marina was an interminable 2-1/2 hour circuitous ordeal in an overcrowded van filled with lots of grumpy, tired passengers. This seems to be a recurrent theme lately.

Finally back at the Durban Marina, we toted our luggage down the long dock and there was Nine of Cups waiting patiently for us, apparently no worse for the wear. In the dark, we didn't notice the Durban grime nor the bird poop on the decks. She looked great. We climbed below, got all the luggage emptied and stowed, cobbled together a dinner of sorts and signed in relief. Home at last!

Uniquely South Africa

One of the best parts about visiting new countries is discovering those things that differentiate it from other places we've visited. We're finding out that South Africa has many superlatives and unique aspects. Here are a few random bits of South Africa trivia that I'm sure you can't live without.

South Africa has the deepest mines in the world, with depths up to 2.5 miles (4km) at the Western Deep Levels Mine, west of Johannesburg. What do they mine? Gold! In fact, South Africa is the world's largest producer of gold, platinum, chromium, vanadium and manganese.

UNISA, the University of South Africa, is a pioneer in distance learning and is the largest correspondence university in the world with 250,000 students.

The DeBeers Group of companies control more than 80% of the world supply of rough diamonds. The largest rough gem-quality diamond ever found was the Cullinan at 3106.75 carats. It was cut into 105 diamonds including the Great Star of Africa and the Lesser Star of Africa, both of which are now part of the British Crown Jewels.

South African Breweries ranks as the second largest brewing company in the world (Anheuser-Busch InBev is #1). It supplies up to 50% of China's beer. Here's a surprise … It purchased USA-based Millers Brewery in 2003, and is now known as SAB-Miller. That means they also own Coors.

McDonalds opened its first South African restaurant in 1995 and now has over 200 stores in South Africa. Big Macs in South Africa are the cheapest in the world … about 30% cheaper than anywhere else. That's nothing though … KFC is even more widely recognized here with over 500 stores in the country. Take a look at this award-winning KFC commercial in Zulu.

Cape Town's Table Mountain is considered one of the seven wonders of the geological world. At just over 580' (178M), it not only dominates the city's skyline, it can be seen as far out to sea as 130 miles.

South Africa reputedly has the longest wine route in the world and Graaf-Reinett in the Western Cape has the world's biggest grapevine. The Black Acorn, planted in 1870, still bears fruit. Except for Europe, South Africa has the oldest wine industry in the world.

South Africa is the birthplace of man. The oldest human skeletal remains (~3.5 million years old) in the world were found in the Sterkfontein Caves. Fossilized footprints were found on the shores of Langebaan Lagoon, Western Cape. The 117,000 year-old fossilized footprints known as “Eve's footprints” are the oldest known footprints of an anatomically modern human. Older than humans, the 2 billion year-old crater in Vredefort is the oldest known crater on Earth, as well as the largest.

World-renowned Dr. Christiaan Barnard, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, performed the first human heart transplant in the world in 1967. He was also the first to do a "piggyback" transplant in 1971, and he was the first to do a heart-lung transplant. In other medical firsts, in 1979, Allan Macleod Cormack from Cape Town won a Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the CT Scanner.

Here are a few more lesser known facts about South Africa ... South Africa is the world's biggest producer and exporter of mohair. Yes, mohair … from Angora goats. The second largest producer? The USA … primarily Texas. Who knew? It's also the world's largest producer of macadamia nuts (nope … not Hawaii!).

There are reportedly ~280,000 windmills on farms across South Africa, second in number only to Australia. You wanted to say Holland, didn't you?

Three of the five fastest land animals live in South Africa - the cheetah, the wildebeest, and the lion.

There's so much more, but this will give you a taste for just how special and unique this country is.

Durban's Botanic Gardens

In the midst of the chaos and hubbub of downtown Durban, sits the Durban Botanic Gardens, Africa's oldest surviving botanic gardens and Durban's oldest institution. Established in 1849, the gardens cover an area of about 37 acres, right in the middle of the city … a virtual oasis of  serene, green, cool shady paths meandering midst flowers, plants and trees. We hadn't visited yet and  it seemed just the thing to do on a hot, sultry, summer's morning.

After picking up a park map, we headed to the orchid house first. There are reputedly over 8,000 plants in the garden's orchid collection and the display of these delicate-looking, complex flowers was stunning.

There's quite a array of sculptures and statuary along the garden paths “playing a vital role in bridging the gap between nature and culture”. We found some pieces quite interesting and others … well, we kind of struggled with them and shrugged our shoulders.

We noticed what appeared to be an old brown ball just laying abandoned on the lawn and wondered who'd left it behind. It turned out to be the fruit of the cannonball tree (couroupita guianensis), an odd tree from Guiana with gorgeous, sweet-smelling flowers growing up its trunk. Despite all the botanic gardens we've visited over the years, we'd never seen a tree like this before.

The Garden of the Senses was interesting. It included stimuli for all the senses from the smell and taste of herbs and plants like rosemary, lavender, garlic and hot chili peppers to the feel of different textures under our feet (cobblestone, wooden deck, bricks and smooth pavement) and soft, velvety leaves that beckoned us to touch them. There were blooming flowers in a riot of color, as well as interesting sculptures … all eye candy. The sound of a babbling brook, a little waterfall gushing over rocks and a breeze brushing past rustling leaves were all auditory.

The Sunken Garden and the herb garden were pleasant, but so exposed to the hot sun that we didn't linger at either for very long.

At one end of the garden's lake was a beautiful lotus pond with flowers the size of dinner plates. The other end of the lake was particularly inviting with park benches under tall shady trees. Ducks and Egyptian geese paddled around in the water. We watched an African spoonbill male trying to entice a  female with his dance moves, but she shunned him. In the trees above, we saw giant nests inhabited by other, presumably successful, spoonbills.

There was a host of “heritage trees”, some planted over 100 years ago. The oldest jacaranda in the country, planted in 1885, resides here as do several Wood's Cycads (encephalartos woodii),  purportedly one of the rarest plants in the world. It looks kind of like a palm, but it's not. Unfortunately, it's not all that remarkable to look at, so unless you're looking for it, you pass right on by. Wood's Cycad has become the emblem and logo for the Durban Botanic Gardens.

We frittered away enough of the morning and it was time to head back to Nine of Cups … boat chores are never finished and they're always waiting.