Durban part 1

For those of you who don't know, the whole reason Jess and I got to go to South Africa in the first place is because we were going to a medical conference in Durban on Oct 6-7 called AWACC - AIDS, or Annual Workshop in Advanced Clinical Care - AIDS. So Doris Duke (Harvard) graciously funded us to go to Durban to attend this conference, and we expanded the trip to a week because it only cost 200$ more to add on Cape Town. And we (the Doris Duke CRFs) also capitalized on the experience by renting a beach house to stay in and a party bus to travel in. Doris does like to travel in style. Reminder: we had all only met each other for 2 weeks in Bethesda. Somehow, it all worked out. I promise to post about the conference itself later, but for now, here are the pictures of the weekend:

The first crew arrives in Durban! Party bus obtained! Alex experiences hemineglect while driving and we all pray and wear our seatbelts. Haha no, but Alex did an awesome job and we only had one extremely frightening car experience which involved going backwards down our extremely steep beach house driveway.

The gang's all here! Except Chemtai, who had visa problems. So sad! We missed you!

The view from Crannogs Cottage's porch, ie, where we had breakfast every morning.

At a bar called Badgers where the waitress did not understand a word we said, despite the fact that we were all using English. South African accents can be hilariously hard to understand, and apparently they feel the same way about the American accent.

Side spoon is necessary when you are 4 to a bench seat.

On Friday night, we went out in Durban and had a BLAST. We ate a giant pizza, I had a margarita with cayenne in it at a place called Taco Zulu, we ran into a bachelor party that paid for tons of drinks, and then ended the night at a reggae bar called Cool Runnings. Obviously it was perfect.

And somehow we ended up staying out until 5am. We got back to the house at 6am and watched the sun rise. Unfortunately, it was a little cloudy - could've been prettier!

Sarah and I were unable to sleep for long when we woke up on Saturday and saw that the weather had changed into perfect beautifulness. So we had a beach day!

This is a bunny chow - a famous Durban specialty. It's just curry in a hollowed out hunk of bread. Pretty tasty!

There were these natural rock pools along the beach that were beauuuutiful, and perfect for swimming since they were shallow and a bit warmer. They were especially pretty when the waves would hit the side and splash up.

And then that last night, Saturday night, we had a big bbq (or braai) and bonfire on the beach! It was so fun that it deserves its own post.