A slightly different City walk

We had stopped by the Tourist Office and booked a walking tour for this morning, so organised a taxi to drop us off downtown to meet our guide Sabelo Mazibuko.

With an occasional nod to the buildings of the colonial era, Sabelo lead us on a tour of the city centre of the African and Indian people who live and work there. We saw the markets and the street traders, the mosque - the largest in Southern Africa -

and the Catholic Cathedral and the Dennis Hurley Centre which provides meals and medical services for the homeless and poor of the area. In addition we saw Zulu herbalists and the market for all their wares alongside fruit and veg and clothes and tools.

Not sure why we stopped in the fabric shop to have a photo taken with the assistants among the wedding dress display but everyone was keen to be in the picture and laughing about it - including the owner

 

We also stopped at an Indian Spice shop where we had a great conversation with the proprietor and I ended up with a variety of spices to carry away. They were impressed that I preferred to buy the individual spices rather than their own curry mix which was apparently what they usually sell to the visitors.

It may not be what the Tourist Office sold us but it was an interesting perspective not least because Sabelo seemed to know everyone and had a word or a joke with them all - we hardly noticed that the temperature had climbed to 32 C by the time we finished. He told us that having been voted the best city guide in 2013 he had won a laptop and that he'd written a guide book to the city which he was in the process of self-publishing - might make for interesting reading!

He dropped us off at the Oriental - a modern Indian restaurant in The Workshop Shopping Centre - where we had an excellent meal and then managed to find a taxi to head home for a well earned siesta reflecting on the fact that we had hardly seen a single white face in over four hours.