durban

Hello! It has been quiet around the blog because I have been in Durban with my friend, Kelly. I was really lucky to visit Durban with her because she grew up there and knew the best spots to take me.

Durban is a beach town on the Eastern coast of South Africa (on the Indian Ocean side). It is the busiest seaport in ZA and is popular among tourists because of its year-round warm weather and beautiful beaches. It is called “the sapphire coast” because of its stunning dark blue water. Thousands of hectares of banana trees, sugarcane and coffee beans thrive here because of the humid salty air.

Fun(ish) fact: Durban is home to the most concentrated population of Indians outside of India, which makes for some amazing Indian food. The most popular Indian food item there is called “bunny chow,” which is curry served in a hallowed-out loaf of bread. If you ever go there, make sure you order the “mild” curry; don’t be a hero because your stomach will punish you for days.

While the weather was beautiful, it was pretty cold and windy because of the bad weather systems that have been haunting Cape Town all winter. The wind was so strong that we wore jackets almost the entire time. This put a HUGE dent in my plan to get a tan!!!! While I didn’t get a tan, I had an amazing time exploring the area and got to see some beautiful things.

Here are some photos of the trip highlights...

 We started off the trip at Kelly's holiday house:

One of my favorite parts of being at the holiday house were the monkeys!!!!!!! They were everywhere and will even come into the house to steal food.

The shots below are from the beach, which was a 5 minute walk from the holiday house. So beautiful!

These guys are called "dussies" or "rock rabbits". Look at their mean little faces close up!

Where there are monkeys, there must be bananas! The blue bags are used to cover the bananas so the monkeys don't eat them.

Then we went to Oribi Gorge, where they have extreme jumping and zipline. The gorge was absolutely HUGE. Note: you cannot tell how huge it was from these photos. It was really windy, so zipline was not an option for me!!! I did, however, walk across the suspension bridge (scary!).

The following day we went to another gorge. Scenes from Blood Diamond were filmed here!

Here is a photo of Kelly, me and Stacey.

Beaver Creek coffee bean farm.

Hope you enjoyed these photos. I am currently sick and without a voice, but i will call you guys soon!

Love,

Jess & Mat

I can pronounce the ingredients!

One of the things I love about South Africa is that the food seems to contain less crap than in the U.S.  And by crap I mean preservatives and other artificial ingredients. Most of the time, I can pronounce all the ingredients on a label without paying insane prices to do so. Nice!!!

Take a look at the labels on a few items we have around the house.

Nacho Chips:

Salted Caramel Ice Cream (aka heaven in a plastic carton):

Strawberry Jam:

Peanut Butter:

Fruit, veggies, meat, milk, bread and eggs have a short shelf life because they rarely contain preservatives. At first, this was irritating because we were running to the store to replace ingredients way more often than we did at home. However, after thinking about it, I realized it’s the way it SHOULD be!!! If you ask me, bread and milk were not meant to last more than a week. It makes me wonder what kinds of crap they put in our food in the U.S. to make it last such a long time.

This is not to say that preservatives and artificial ingredients are never used here. Of course they are. But it seems to be used in fewer products. Just like the U.S., you will pay a premium for products certified as GMO free, hormone free, cruelty free, organic, free range, pesticide free, etc., but the normal products are still quality, which I appreciate.

South Africa is surprisingly self-sufficient, producing a large percentage of food and food products here in the country. If you read the labels, most things are “made in the RSA” or “a product of South Africa.” Note: RSA is the Republic of South Africa (its official name). I would say that food prices are slightly less than the U.S. if the item is produced here in South Africa. However, the prices skyrocket when the item is imported. And by skyrocket, I mean $32 for a pound of Starbucks coffee beans (just criminal!) or $12 for a small package of double-stuffed Oreo cookies. And, if you decide to splurge on the item, it might be stale or taste different than you expected.

I will be doing more posts on food soon. J

Love,

Jess & Mat

you learn something new every day...

Hello! Many of you probably have not seen a map of South Africa that shows the provinces, oceans and neighboring countries. So, I thought I'd share one :-)

Note: Please excuse the spacing issues in this post...I  cannot figure out how to correct it! haha

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Here is some other stuff you may not know:

• South Africa has 9 provinces. We live in Mpumalanga (located in the upper right corner of the map above, in yellow)
• The country's official name is Republic of South Africa
• Home to the hardest golf shot in the world, located at Legends Golf & Safari Resort. You tee off from a 430m mountain and it takes the ball 30 seconds to reach the ground

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• The oldest human fossil was found here (Cradle of Humankind)

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• Table Mountain in Cape Town is believed to oldest in the world

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• There are more than 2,000 shipwrecks off the ZA coast, some dating back 500 years

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• ZA is the 2nd largest fruit exporter in the world
• The world's first heart transplant was done in ZA in 1967
• South Africa has native penguins on the coast

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• World's largest producer of macadamia nuts
• The Cullinan diamond, the world's largest diamond, was found in ZA in 1905. It is now part of British crown jewels

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• Home to the deepest gold mine in the world, coming in at 11,749 feet deep
• Blue Crane is the national bird 

• Protea is the national flower

• This is the national flag

Hope you enjoyed learning a little about ZA!

Love,
Jess & Mat

burning in our hood

I hope you guys had a nice weekend! We were lazy bums on Saturday and then we went to a quarter horse ranch for a braai (bbq) on Sunday. We were tired when we got home after running around outside all day with the horses and dogs.

Remember how I told you they are always burning something here? Well, take a peek at the photo below. This was across the street from our house! There is a small pond in between the burning and the house, but can you believe this? There was no wind so the smoke smell was seeping in all night. We were not happy. The grass better be SUPER green in a couple months :-)

Love,

Jess & Mat

south african house vs. american house

By now, most of you have had a virtual tour of our casa via FaceTime, but I thought you may get a laugh out of the little differences between a South African house and an American house that we may not have pointed out.

1.  No doorbell. Whaaaat?!?!

2.  It took Telkom nearly 4 weeks to install our ADSL line. While we are overjoyed to have internet at all, it is slow. As you can see from the photos below, they did an excellent job installing the line!! haha

3.  Light switches and power outlets are on outside of the bathrooms. It is against South African building code to have them inside. It is pretty annoying!

4.  Only one “air con” (A/C) unit in ENTIRE house.

5.  Doors use old-fashioned skeleton keys. The kicker is that each door has a different key. You should see the size of our key rings!

6.  There is only 1 (or maybe 2 if you are lucky) electric outlet per room. What’s weird is that each appliance has a different type of plug so we need several adaptors.

7.  Small fridge. You cannot really tell in this photo but it is narrow. Food does not have a long shelf life here, so a small fridge actually works well.

8.  Need for Jo Jo water tank. This is helpful when they turn the water off for no reason.

9.  Wake up every day by the screech of the hadeda (aka most annoying bird in the world). Curious what it sounds like? YouTube has a bunch of videos so you can hear the screech.

10.  Need for generator when power goes out at breakfast and dinner times.

11.  Need for metal slam door to protect us (and our valuables) from danger.

12.  No mailbox and no public postal system. Mail and packages are not delivered to homes, but rather to pre-paid PostNet boxes, which are sporadically located. Paper mail is really only used by businesses and is delivered via private post. While a national law may exist, mail theft is not enforced.

13.  No dishwasher. I never realized how many dishes we use! I think each of you knows why this one stinks :-(

14.  Small washing machine and dryer with meters of clothesline in the backyard.  Tumble dryers are not a staple item in homes here because most people hang clothes outside to dry. I can deal with no dishwasher, but a tumble dryer was non-negotiable!

15.  Ants. Yuck.

16.  Walls are made of bricks coated with plaster. This makes picture hanging nearly impossible and I cannot find those cool 3M self adhesive hangers anywhere.

Have a great weekend!

Love,
Mat & Jess