We're in Africa

Hi everyone!
Sorry for the delay in posting to the blog. Internet access has proven to be a little more difficult than we had expected. We do now have access via a cellular 3G card. It’s a bit expensive so we won’t be able to post pictures very often.

We’ll we’ve made it to Africa. After spending a week in Pretoria waiting; we are now living in Port Edward. The flight over was brutal. We were in transit for 30.5 hours. I started my timer when we were having coffee in the Albuquerque Airport and stopped it when we arrived at the hotel in Pretoria. The first night we stayed at a hotel called the Burgers Park Hotel. It was a pretty nice hotel, but we were so tired we didn’t really get to enjoy it. The next day we moved to another hotel called the Olympic hotel, kinda funny since we had just been to Athens. After the first night we were fortunate enough to get upgraded to the penthouse suite. The area wasn’t the safest place for us to be walking around so we spent quite a bit of time at the hotel. We ate most of our meals at the hotel too. The restaurant there was an Indian restaurant. Fortunately, it was really good so we didn’t mind eating so much Indian food. I took pictures of both rooms. Go to the flikr.com page to see them all.

Port Edward is a really nice small coastal town in the southern part of KwaZulz Natal. In fact, it is the most southern town before entering the Eastern Cape. We spent the first few nights in Port Edward at the Estuary Inn. It was really nice, bur very expensive. We then moved to the Port Edward Holiday Resort Chalets. They were only a small step above camping. On the first day, I spent most of my time walking around town talking to the real estate agents trying to find a house. I think we had all of the agents in town looking for us. The biggest problem we faced was that Mid-December through Mid-January is the peak tourist season and no one wants to rent their house for the whole year.

We’ve started meeting the people of the town and making a few friends. There is a nice bar and restaurant in town called the Web. They have good pizzas and Castle and Hansa Beer on tap. I haven’t purchased my fishing license yet, but am going to this week. Hopefully, you’ll start seeing pictures of big fish on the blog. Port Edward is know for really good fishing.

Working with the UN has been a bit frustrating. There have been problems with communication from the beginning of this adventure, and they haven’t gotten any better. The other UNV’s are really nice and we’ve spent a lot of time with them.

Hope everyone is doing well. If you have a chance to write we would love to hear from you.
Scott and Tanya