Beach Ice-cream

No visit to the beach can be without an ice cream and a wonderful lady at your side. To prove that I have both at the beach, my babe and ice-cream here is a selfie. This is our last day of our family seaside holiday at Uvongo. The weather has been great, the kids have enjoyed themselves and us well we are relaxed on the beach with our soft serve ice cream filled sugar cones with flake and dipped in caramel.

Life’s a Beach

The weather turned out spectacular and the beach at Uvongo perfect for our seaside family holiday. Lynda managed to find an AirBnB townhouse that sleeps 6 for only R300 per night. It was a clean apartment on the 2nd floor with just a smudge of a view of the ocean but walking distance to the beach. We invited Lynda’s daughter Robynne with her family Marco and Rebekha, her son Bradley, and my son Matthew. That made up the 6 for our family holiday.

With the stress of yesterday’s fire, now is the time to let the waves wash away the muck that has already been built up this year.

Nightmare Hotel Chantecler

After last night’s disaster dinner at The Chantecler Hotel in Bothas Hill, we didn’t want any fancy place so we ended up at Durban South Beach just as the weather closed in. So here we were enjoying Strawberry Daiquiris, yes a pink drink Richard, while watching a few brave surfers trying to catch a wave or two. It wasn’t the best Daiquiri I’ve ever tasted but it help us forget last night as the stormy weather started to threaten.

As for evening before I am sure I am going to use The Chantecler Hotel experience on how a waiter/waitress should not treat their guests as the launch our Food Crit Blog, so watch this space. I’ll leave you with a little insight on what transpired, my meal of spare ribs arrived to our table 15 minutes after ordering and no one else's at our table, an hour and a half later the 4 pizzas arrived. To make matters worse the quarter chicken order was totally forgotten and never placed through to the kitchen. Not once did the waitress come tell us that the kitchen or that she had a problem, we only found out after I had to get up and walk to the kitchen to seek out our waitress. Not to mention no front of house nor restaurant manager was seen at all during the entire traumatic experience.

Sigh, now that nightmare is off my chest, where is my pink drink.

Sheffield Beach

Matthew and I left Nelspruit at 06:30 and headed for the Dolphin Coast. We arrived at our destination, Paws 4 Thought at Ballito just over eight hours later. At first the scenery was wonderful, driving through forest covered mountain passes but later the surrounding countryside flattened out and became endless. We were so relieved as we took the Umhlali turnoff and soon we were frolicking on Sheffield Beach.

It was Skye's first time on a beach and he really enjoyed himself. Only Patch and Skye were not afraid of the water, were as Maxy and Jade just watched us enjoy the tidal pools from the water's edge.

Christmas Bay

It is much cooler than yesterday's humid blast with soft drizzle falling. A perfect day for the beach. So at 5 am I headed for Salmon Bay, the most southern of Ballito’s beaches and walked north with my Italian Greyhounds in the early morning sun. We have been told that the beaches have been cleaned after the New Year long weekend but there was broken glass, beer bottles, chicken and chop bones everywhere. It was a nightmare for me trying my three away from the bones. Two hours was enough for me and headed back to Paws for Thought for breakfast.

Matthew and I decided to find a better beach to walk the dogs. So we went north away from the big city and found Christmas Bay, a perfect beach to walk the dogs and for Matthew to snorkel the tidal rock pools. It was a perfect day with no crowds and no mess. Just Matthew, three Italian Greyhounds and I on a beach all by ourselves with only bottle nose dolphins to share it with us as they frocked in the back line.

St Elmos

2nd Beach Port St Johns

Trafalgar Beach