Gotta Go and Pick Up the Bike

After a long, long, long flight to South Africa, I was more than ready to get the trip going. Had an interesting conversation with my seat mate, Janice, who was from South Africa, but currently living in the UK. Turns out, she didn’t have a South African passport and was standing at immigration for a few minutes. For me, immigration was quick, with not much concern given over how long I was staying or if I had return plans or anything. Cool.

Picked up my bags that were already circling, grabbed some cash, and called an Uber to the hotel. Driving from the Airport to the hotel in a bit of a fog, I realized Durban was not at all what I was expecting. Garbage lined streets with the smell of burning tiers, dried up urine, (you never forget that smell), and some of the poorest conditions I’ve seen in years made me start to worry about my hotel.

Ryan sent me a list of hotels a friend shared with him, so I was putting my faith in my selection.

Parade Hotel

My Uber driver looked like he was 14 years old, but put on some music of the Maskandi genre which was pretty laid back and had some serious Zulu vibes. I told him I would be dropping my bags and needed a ride to the shipping warehouse so if he didn’t mind waiting, I’d pay him cash plus a tip – he agreed, no problem.

The hotel is right off the beach, but it has a rather inconspicuous facade with hardly anything giving it away. I walked in and the people greeted me with smiles, so I figured that’s at least a good start! My room wasn’t ready (it was 12PM), but I asked the security guard if I could stow my luggage and we put into some back room without a problem. I returned to my uber and we headed to the shipping warehouse to collect my bike.

Arriving at the warehouse, it was the typical process. Sign in at security, head to the main reception, and start telling people who you are and what you’re there for. All I had was Ryan’s name, but mentioning Manora at least got things moving in the right direction. Luckily, Ryan gave me the name of his associate Natasha who gave me some names and I was quickly picked up by a girl named Hope who led me right to my bike.

Took them a couple of minutes to locate my keys, but once they found them and I was able to connect the battery, bad news – the battery was totally dead. Not sure if the bike was left on or something, but that definitely should not have happened. And, of course, I forgot to bring my booster. That was on my mind not to forget (as well as my toolkit which I also forgot at the hotel) the entire time I was flying to Durban! Moron.

They then told me that they were waiting for the Carnet paperwork and that it wouldn’t be there until 2PM. I figured I would just uber it back to the hotel, pickup my booster, and head back. I could always wait there. As soon as I arrived at the hotel, I received a message from Natasha that the paperwork had arrived early – great! I booked an Uber, went back to the hotel, had the driver wait again, went back to the warehouse and started up my bike. There were a bunch of errors on the dash and the idle seemed really off, but I figured that was just because it needed to be charged. I rode it back to the hotel and checked in,

I went back outside and the bike started right up, but I sat there and let it idle for a minutes while I made plans to go shopping….

Socks!

I picked up some new socks and made it back to the hotel. The bike seemed ok and the voltage looked steady. I asked lucky if I could park the bike in the back, and although he said “we’ve never had anyone park back here before”, he let me do it. At least I knew my bike would be safe.

Dinner

I walked inside an took a seat at the bar attached to the restaurant so I could ask about food options, they all said the same thing – “Pesto at the Palace”. So, I headed over and grabbed a glass of wine and some dinner – Prawns with Calamari, frites, and a salad.

Beach

After dinner, I thought I would take a walk along the beach. There was a long pier and the waves were crashing, that was definitely part of my relaxation.

The beach was pretty dirty and most of the trees looked dead. I had struck up a conversation with a travel guy earlier outside the hotel and he told me it was because the beach vendors all use the bushes to piss in and it’s killing all the plant life along the beach.

Went back to the room, followed my routine, and tried to get some sleep. I was heading to East London tomorrow.