Shailen's week in S.A without Alisa

Well, Alisa left me for a week and a half in S.A and I spent it with my immediate family visiting my extended family. It was really great seeing everyone again as it has been 6 years since I have been in S.A. Seriously, all you do when you're visiting family is eat, eat and eat again. You have a huge breakfast and then you go over to someone elses for lunch and they have prepared a huge lunch and then the same thing happens for dinner!

I managed to go and see places where I grew up including the houses I stayed in as well as my old primary school, Parkdene Primary. This school was in a predominately white area and Presheen and I were the only non-whites in the school but we never really noticed it. I was even able to meet up one of my old teachers and have a chat with him. It was a great trip down memory lane for me.

The week that my parents were leaving, we decided to go to Lost City, which is this awesome hotel and water theme park out in the middle of a lush green valley about 200km away from Joburg. Its in the middle of nowhere and is just fantastic. Its got an Ancient Village theme to the place.

Nishay standing on the bridge leading to Valley of the Waves

Me facing the other way on the same bridge. If you look carefully in the background, you will notice carvings on the rock face of an elephant - there are others in that area of a cheetah and a monkey but hard to see from this photo.

On the hour, they bridge has a mock earthquake and it shakes and has smoke coming out of vents. Quite an experience :D

Monkeys run around freely and scrounge for food in the bins but keep their distance from humans.

We went to the Valley of the Waves and this place has water slides, a lazy river and a proper wave pool!!! - not like the crappy wave pools at Mt Albert but an actual wave pool that has a wave that you can surf if you want and the pool is outdoors and its huge!!!

The Wave Pool area.

There is also a slide that is known as the Slide of Courage, and this is a slide that has a near vertical apex and you drop down and slide to the bottom. I wanted to get a photo of me going down the slide and so had to go down 4 times before we got it and then I went down again to have it filmed. It was so much fun!

I also managed to lie my way into their 5 star hotel property (security is tight) and got some great photos.

Elaborate fountains that were at the Palace

The entrance to the Palace

Pools come complete with waterfalls and a resteraunt area.

The Palace at night with the fire burning strong

The ceiling at the foyer of the Palace

After a vary teary goodbye to my parents, I was left alone in S.A until Alisa came back (5 days later). I just visited more family and then on the day Alisa arrived we flew to Durban to start our next leg of our journey....