Botanic Gardens venture...

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On Sunday, we traveled by taxi to the Durban Botanic Gardens! This is where the child’s eyes really came out…so many trees, plants, fruits and birds that we could never see in North America. We had tea and scones (with jam and fresh cream) at the Tea Kiosk. There was a sign that read ‘Don’t feed the monkeys’…but we never saw the monkeys.

Jen Jen…there was an orchid house! The smell was a perfect perfume…not too loud, exactly right. There were many varieties…small to large, white to multi-colored. So delicate and unique!

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Our favorite tree so far is the ‘fever tree’. The bark has a dusting of yellowish powder so the tree appears to be yellow. They call it a fever tree because it grows along marshy banks and long ago folks thought the tree was the cause of malaria. We saw many of these on our trip to Hluhluwe Saturday.

As for eating over the past few days, we’ve experienced the best Indian food ever. We also enjoyed venturing to the corner supermarket (sometimes called hypermarkets here). They have so many different items. We purchased some ‘fried chicken’ and ‘spare ribs’ potato chips, as well as three oddly named canned sodas; Iron Brew, Cream Soda and Stoney Ginger! Iron Brew tastes like cough syrup and Cream Soda tastes like crème de menthe, but the Stoney Ginger was great! We’ll be ordering the chips for home delivery as they were quite tasty, although I think they should rename the ‘spare ribs’ chips ‘steak fat’ chips…Dad and Jamie will understand exactly how these taste with that description.

Tami and Chris…I’ve been photographing all of our food! I’ll put these pictures up on Flickr when we get back home.

I hope you are all happy and healthy…it isn’t easy getting on the internet here…but we’ll keep trying!!!  Pictures are not uploading fast enough....!!!!!

*BACKGROUND INFO- The Durban Botanical Gardens are famous for the original specimen of a Cycad (Encephalartos woodii) that is still widely acknowledged as probably the rarest plant in the world, as well as for its extensive collection of South African Cycad species. A highlight of the Gardens is the Orchid House which is named after Ernest Thorp, who was resonsible for building it up to its position of world renown as the first "naturalistic" Orchid display house.