A hard life, but someone's gotta do it...

Before I describe to you my glorious, fabulous holiday, I just have to give a little public thank-you to my wonderful aunt, uncle and cousin who sent me a sun-care package in the mail this week! I am now the proud owner of Clinique lip/eye SPF 30 sunblock, Super City Block SPF 40 for my face, and UV-Response Body Cream SPF 50! THANK YOU! It is always needed here in Africa where I apply sunscreen daily! It was such a treat...and, you know that my mother is heaving another sigh of relief by being able to check off one potential threat on her list. Skin cancer, take that! Now, we face the crocodiles. More on that to come...

On July 7, I left for Durban and was picked up at the airport by my friend Kate Meyerowitz who is an outgoing Ambassadorial Scholar from South Africa, headed to San Diego in less than a month. She and her family have a cottage in the Drakensberg Mountains which they were visiting for the weekend and they kindly allowed me to join them. So, we drove up on the evening of the 7th and spent the entire day Sunday there and part of the day on Monday. Here are some pictures of the hike I took up the mountain with Kate's parents. The stream at the top is so clean that you're officially allowed to drink from it!

The picture of the aloe is, of course, for Carl.

On Monday, Kate and I went to see a birds of prey show on the mountain. Very cool. My favorites were the Long-Crested Eagle and the Cape Vulture pictured below (isn't the picture of the Cape Vulture awesome?!).

After returning from the Drakensberg on Monday, we retired to Kate's house to shower up and do some laundry. Kate's brother Andrew and I even got to watch the Braves take on San Diego (to whom they almost lost in the bottom of the ninth!). We then went out to dinner to meet up with my fellow travelers, Cape Town Ambassadorial Scholars Emily Avera and Emily Kenney, Emily K's sister Alli, and my friend Niv. We had dinner at the Harbour and heard the band Love Joint (I think that's correct) which is a relatively big-time South African band. We then retired to our backpackers.

The next morning we awoke early in order to get some breakfast and head to the Victoria Street Market. We bought some spices, etc., but I must show some Jo'burg pride and say that our Oriental Market is far superior, regardless of the vast Indian population in Durban. We then retrieved our rental car and began our journey to St. Lucia. Of course, we made sure we had a music selection first, knowing that we would not have radio for much of the journey. This meant that we bought a few community CDS: A #1s compilation from the 1980s to today, Amy Winehaus, Bob Marley, the new Maroon 5 album, and Cape Town Jazz. We figured that gave us enough that we probably wouldn't be so sick of them by the end of the journey. The drive to St. Lucia is through rolling hills of sugar cane plantations which makes for incredibly beautiful scenery. We passed through small villages, etc., and in a little over 3 hours made it to St. Lucia.

And that is where I'll leave you for now, friends. More to come soon, I promise! Love and miss you all!