Cooking up a storm

Fede and Josh have been moel guests cooking up a storm for us on a few occasions during their 7 week stay over the International Film Festival in Durban. We're going to be sorry to see you guys go back to Boston!!! We really loved your stay.

 

Fede with Dave's daughter Kate-Lynn showing her how to make mushroom risotto the real Italian way

Josh tucks in to the home-breaded chicken

A Taste of Durban

The Durban food and wine festival a Taste of Durban has been running for a few days and seen out and about are friends Judith and Collette, Ian, Marc and Lee and Llewellyn and myself.

Judith, Lee, Colette and Llewellyn

Great idea, great Durban winter weather and good food and wine!!
 

Barry visits

Guesthouse co-owner Dave welcomes Barry to the guesthouse - a chance to get away from the rat-race and come and soak up some of Durban's glorious winter weather. Especially the warm rooftop Jacuzzi at night where Barry spent most of his quiet time.

 

More restaurants a walk away

At the Spar Shopping Centre about 300m from the guesthouse are two of Durban's great restaurants - 9th Avenue Bistro, possibly Durban's finest fine dining restaurants, and Green Mango which receives rave reviews for it's Thai cuisine. Joops Place is also famous for it's Dutch steaks.

 

Sunday Air

With the Durban Airshow on Saturday our plane was stuck in the hangar with tents and stands outside, but fortunately the clean-up was quick. By this morning most was clear again and we hoped to take out our plane to pump up the tyres and go for a quick flight. The tyres part turned out to be more daunting than imagined and I really can't see how you can unscrew the cap off the valve without taking the wheelspats right off. So instead we did a quick touch-and-go at King Shaka International slipping in behind an SAA airbus. That satisfied the need for some air for the day.

 

Durban coastline on the way home from King Shaka Airport

Margaritas with best friends

Guesthouse co-owners/partners Llewellyn and Dave, with Ian and Marc

We take turns perfecting our recipes for Margaritas and the more we drink the better they get ha ha.

Durban July Winners

We had an awesome few hours at the Durban July races yesterday.. waited especially for the 13th race.. after the horses have run, about 50-100 guys climb over the rails and line up for a 100m naked race to the finish. Pretty hot! I took a video clip again but with my iphone this year was not able to zoom, so it was not the best video I have made. Here's the link to the 2013 video clip.

 

Fede and Josh excell

Josh from the States and Federico from Spain have decided they can get married at last after a USA Court decision that now recognises state laws for immigration purposes. Thus if a non-citizen marries a citizen in a state where marriage is legal (eg Massachusetts where Josh comes from), then Fede will be able to get his green card, whereas before the federal immigration laws did not recognise the gay marriage at federal level.

 

Here they show us their Italian cooking skills with a spread of roquefort gnocci for mains and parma ham starters as we party it up with guests ahead of the July Handicap races which take place today.

 

Josh and Fede are staying with us at the guesthouse for a few weeks

Festive Durban July

South Africa's premier horseracing and fashion event takes place this Saturday, a few steps down the road from the guesthouse.

The fashion theme for the event is POSH! Oh my GOSH! - so it's a chance to dress up (and dress down..see below) and have a ball (or 2).

Not to be missed is the annual 13th race, which takes place after the last of the 12 horse races. This is probably the most watched event as up to 200 hunky guys take off their clothes at the 100m mark and do a starkers dash to the finish line... some even run back again whilst others put their jocks back on and return for their clothes. Check out the YouTube video clip of last years race here.



Pic from the video taken at the finishline last year