The week after the night before – Durban to the Drakensberg

Sunday after the game was pretty uneventful.  Picked up Adams hire car, returned the hire car for a new hire car that worked, bought food, bought beer under the counter (not sold on a Sunday for some reason), did some circuit training with our new personal trainer, Chipsey, using his TRX Straps (suspension training – if you want to find out more, speak to Chris as he has a brand new business called Plan B Personal Training – that’s the only free plug he’ll get here!) went for a meal and I polished off the best part of 2 bottles of white wine and 10 castles – everyone else wasn’t really drinking!

For the sake of receiving denigrating comments for the lads – I was pretty pissed by the end of the night, highlighted by the fact I was caught dancing on camera…might make it on here one day!

Monday turned into a day of lazing on the beach and cooking up a meat feast in the evening. After a few hands of cards and we were all pretty wiped out – in bed by midnight.

Tuesday, we got going reasonable early, with the intention of going to the marine world at uSharka.  After getting there and wandering round a little, we decided it wasn’t worth it, so mosied on up the beach for a milkshake.  In the afternoon we had decided to head north to Umhlanga and to the Natal Shark Board where they perform a dissection of a shark a few times every week.  Essentially the Shark Board has shark nets up along a large stretch of the Natal coast line in an attempt to reduce the number of sharks swimming close to the shore and munching on unsuspecting swimmers.  Anyway, when a shark is caught in the net it’s usually tagged and released, unfortunately some do die, and the previous day a dusky shark (Carcharhinus Obscurus) had been caught and died in the nets.  So there we were, sitting in front of a 3 metre shark on a dissection table.

Shark dissection

As the dissection dude started opening the shark up, it reminded me of the scene in Jaws were Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Schneider go and check to see if the shark someone caught, was the one that ate the kid.  Similarly, there was a lot of fluid pouring out of the shark – and it really stank!  Disappointingly the stomach was empty, but everyone was surprised (including the guy dissecting) to find that the shark, a female, had been pregnant.  So he proceeded to pull out a 2 foot long shark pup from the mothers womb – perfectly formed, but obviously dead.  There were a further 11 pups in the shark, which they weren’t about to pull out in front of the large number of school kids there!  Extremely interesting, and at R25 per person, excellent value.

Shark pup

After a quick beer in a nearby bar we headed back to the Bluff before a night out to watch the mid-week Lions game against the emerging Springbok.  The game was played in Cape Town in the wind and rain – we were all pleased we hadn’t headed along for it.  The game was a 13-13 draw – pretty shabby, with no real contenders for a test team place.

Wednesday we left Durban, heading towards the Drakensberg.  En route we were staying over in Nottingham Road were Adam had a recommendation on where to stay. We went via the Valley of 1000 hills, which had a lot of small hills and valleys, we didn’t count 1000, but they could well have been there.  Rocking up into Nottingham Road we had a feed at the local Austrian restaurant?!, checked into a hotel for the night, popped to the local brewery to buy some beer and went to the nearby cheese manufacturers to buy some goats cheese – lovely!

We were staying at the apparently legendary Nottingham Road Hotel which had the oldest pub / bar in Kwa Zulu Natal, called Notties.  Chips, Trouve and myself (Adam was napping) hit the bar around 6pm, discovering there was a quiz night on – we decided to compete.  In the end we didn’t actually do too badly, but we didn’t win.  The quiz had two winners, and as they had no tie break question they elected to auction off the prize, a bottle of Apple Sourz.  After a few pathetic bids of 10 rand, 20 rand, 25 rand, I decided to cut to the chase and offered up 100 rand.  Obviously over priced, but the proceed were going to the local charity – we decided (after drinking a shot or two from the bottle) to keep it for the Drakensberg the following evening.

After the quiz, we had a bite to eat in their restaurant, then back to the bar for a few beers.  In the end it turned out to be quite a few beers.  And after the locals had all left around 10:30pm, we had a lock in with the bar manager, Terry, and one of the staff there, Warren.  We played drinking games (spoof and slaps – plus we nailed the apple sourz as well as some purple drink?!) until what must have been the early hours.  Fantastic night, excellent bar.

The next day we were a little late to get going, unsurprisingly!  We decided to hot foot it to the Drakensberg, we were staying in the Natal National Park in the Northern Drakensberg at Thendele.  Thendele is a camp ground with chalets / cabins looking onto the ‘Amphitheatre’, a section of the Drakensberg, 500m high and 5km long, that looks a little like an amphitheatre.  We arrived around 2pm, and after unloading went for a walk to the nearby Tiger Falls – sadly they were pretty dry, but a good walk nonetheless.

Our chalet in the Berg - overlooked by the Amphitheatre

When we got back the wind had really begun to pick up, making the chalet (nor very well fitted windows) into a bit of a wind tunnel.  So we got the fire going, and cracked into the cheese we had bought near Nottingham Road – all very tasty.  After a while the wind dropped, so we decided to give the braii a go – annoyingly it was bolted down, so if the wind picked up we knew we would have to put it out, rather than causing a fire in the national park.  Disappointing, after getting it going really well, the wind became too much, almost blowing the coals off the braii itself, so we put it out and cooked the steaks and ostrich burgers on the stove.  After a night of cards and watching the football (South Africa playing Brazil in the Confederations Cup) we decided it was time for bed – as the only heat was coming from the fire and a small electric heater, the two bedrooms were absolutely freezing, so we decided to pull all the mattresses into the main room.  It was the right idea, as it was bloody cold.

The next day, we were due in Pretoria, and decided to head there via Rourkes Drift, the location of a famous battle between the British Army and the Zulus.  It was a fair old trek, eventually getting there at 1pm.  As we knew we had a 4hr journey to Pretoria from there, we really didn’t the get chance to understand exactly what happened there – we whizzed round the museum, but that was about it.  (Later we found out that there are better battle grounds at Spioenkop, very close to where we were staying in the Berg!  Interesting, the Kop, the stand at Anfield, is named after Spioenkop).

Our 4 hour drive grew to something more like 6 hours – poor estimations, and lots of roadworks.  But eventually we got to Pretoria, and settled into the Thatch Cottage, about 1km from Loftus Versfeld, the scene of the next Lions vs. Springbok battle.

Lions Tour – Durban, 1st Test

After a night in a dorm at the backpackers on Anstey’s beach in Bluff, I met up (again, as we’d already done a few beers at Jo’burg airport on Friday afternoon) with Chips and Trouve (who had conveniently arrived in from Jo’burg just gone 8am) for a fry up in a café on the beach.

We had a bit of a rigmarole finding the accommodation, Ocean Blue Guesthouse, but fortunately a Bluff local, David, pulled over as we were attempting to hike up the road (just shy of a 5km walk to the guesthouse from where we were) to our guest house with our bags.  Turned out that he headed up the local tourism group, as well as owning a restaurant called the Chicken Shack.  So, David gave us a lift, and we were in our accommodation by 10am.  Ended up being a two bedroom apartment overlooking the Indian Ocean, all for R600 a day!

The only missing piece at this point was Adam (often called Adam “The Liability” Davies)  – having received scattered updates from him, we knew that he was heading up from the Wild Coast and was likely to be late.

So - Adam got lost. And after various phone calls relaying directions, he met us at the Chicken Shack and by 1pm, we were all set to head to the ground, a little later than planned, but a good 2hrs ahead of kick-off.  David’s mate Howard gave us a lift in and after a slightly fraught time hunting down our hospitality area, we were properly getting into it (well the beer at least).

Turned out all the cash we had forked out for the tickets had not been entirely squandered, as we had excellent buffet food, and plenty of beers laid on.  So after a plateful of lamb and 16 beers delivered to our table we started feeling at home.  Only issue was we had 30 minutes to neck the beers before we had to get into the ground.

In the end, we were in our seats by 2:55pm with the roar of “Lions, Lions, Lions” ringing round the Kings Park stadium.  The stadium itself is next door to the new stadium they’re building for the 2010 World Cup, which is looking quite impressive.  Kings Park is pretty special though, with immensely steep stands on both sides, everyone seems to get an excellent view.  The atmosphere was awesome. Even seemed to be better than I remembered the Kiwi tour to be back in 2005.

Adam, taking in the atmosphere

The anthems

A Good Start

The game kicked-off to the anticipation that a) the Lions would continue to perform as well as they had done in their provincial games b) we would kick any penalty coming our way with Jones playing and c) we would be dominant in the scrums.  After the first 40min we had a pretty dismal performance.

Vickery had single handedly concede 4 penalties, and was being out scrummaged (possibly unfairly) by “The Beast”, Jones had missed the 2-3 penalty chances he had, and we really weren’t firing.  We did have one try on  the score board, and Ugo had come extremely close to getting another (stopped only by seemingly lucky defence and the Third Match Official (TMO)).  Half time was, 19-7 to the Saffers.

The 2nd half was in contrast remarkably different.  After 5 minutes Vickery was pulled off and replaced by (Adam) Jones, and all of a sudden the scrum looked shored up – good to see.  Then the Lions seemed to have more possession, strung together some reasonable phases (and Chips eventually relented and went to the bar to get some beer for us!) and things seemed to be turning, but as the game entered the last 10 minutes, it did look out of reach.  Then we got a score to put us within 5 points of the lead, with a few minutes on the clock.

We might just snatch it

The atmosphere really grew – all the Lions fans saw that we could snatch a win, and the Saffer fans could see it too.  Sadly, South Africa got their hands on the ball and closed down the game, winning 26-21.

The end

Overall disappointing – poor 1st half scrimmaging, a couple of TMO’s disallowed tries, a few missed penalties – on another day it could have been the Lions game.

The only thing left for us to do was drink!  Back to the hospitality, the guys went to the bar, and I went to the toilet.  Walking out, I bumped into Richard Heberden, a chap Chips and I played rugby with at Old Wimbledonians.  It turned out he was over with a few of the old chaps (Frank, Scally (Mike) plus a few others) we played with 8-10 years ago, including his brother Martin.  We cracked through a few with them then headed into the car park where Adam had arranged to hook up with a distant relative of his, Ro, for beers and a braii.

The Old Wimbledonians crew

Ro had laid it all on, even buying in carefully selected Ale style beers for us real ale drinkers.  As the evening progressed it became steadily clear we were going to drink him dry (not a problem, but I think he thought he had bought a truck load to cater for us!).  So, he pulled out a bottle of Jamesons, cut the top off a 2 litre plastic beer bottled, and started to mix whiskey and waters in it, pouring it into glasses and sharing it amongst us.

Ro and friends

For some, this was the final straw.  Well, for Trouve at least.  He had already gone walkabout a little earlier in the evening, and now we found him asleep / passed out on the grass.  All the guys we were with were going “Is your mate Ok?‘’ and  “How does he sleep with his leg up like that?“.  Knowing Trouve as we do, we simply said “He’s fine” and carried on drinking.

Trouve takes a well deserved break

A while later, we admitted defeat (as we had ran out of booze) and decided to let one of the Saffer chaps we were drinking with take us to a bar, Harvey Wallbangerz, somewhere in Durban (we’re still not sure where).  By this point, Trouve had slept off the worst of it and was having a second wind.  In Harvey’s we drank some blue muck out of a jug, the memory thereafter is a little hazy, but eventually we got home at 2am ish.

In the aftermath the next morning Chipsey revealed that he managed to climb into bed with Trouve, after falling asleep in his own bed?!  Sleeping arrangement were – 2 bedrooms, Trouve and I in one with two single beds, Adam and Chips in the other sharing a double bed.  So Trouve and Chips shared a single bed for most of the night.  No one was sure why or even how they managed to fit into one bed, but they did!  They won’t be living this one down!