Durban Beaches: I Finally Get It

It took a couple of inhumanly early starts (I like to go back to sleep after Fajr, thanks) but I finally got to understand the fuss surrounding the Durbanite beaches.

To be fair those that I had seen before today weren't much to shout about. My basis of reference, of course, is the amazing Gold Coast near Brisbane, Australia, on which at first glance North Beach was no match for. The sand wasn't as clean or fine and the waves looked a bit too noisy to be of any real interest. To be honest I was wondering whether any of my hosts had ever seen a really good beach before.

But that all changed this morning. We switched to Ushoka a few miles south, a much quieter and calmer beach and all the better for it. Despite the quite unreasonable time of the day we decided to don our swimming gear and throw our misgivings into the sea (literally). It was probably the best decision I had made during my stay in Durban.

I think I could have stayed in the Indian Ocean for hours longer than we actually did. There's something quite heavenly about bobbing up and down with waves demonstrating amplitudes of 5-6 metres or so. I even tried a bit of body boarding, something which in hindsight I shouldn't have done (a grazed forehead and sprained neck provide a good argument for that). And as what can only be seen as a generous bonus there was even a swimsuit photoshoot going on all the time on the beach. I'm sure that doesn't happen every day though.

For the first time I feel that I could actually live in a place like this. I'm kinda surprised at how it just took a single and quite trivial thing like a beach.