Durban Vacation, Day #1

I think I want to blog this vacation! I want to look back one day and remember the time we loaded up our 3 kids (ages 9, 7, and 5) and took them to the beach for the first time! If you know me, you know my motto is "Live Simply so you can Vacation Big." :) After coming back from furlough, paying off Paris surgery debt, it was time to start saving for our August trip. We looked into Kenya, Tanzania, and Durban, and Durban won out due to its family friendly activities and a great beach hotel using our airline miles. So....here we go!

We purposely planned this trip to coincide with Wes & Laurie leaving for their furlough so that 1) we could give them a ride to Lusaka/airport and 2) we could then get free transport to Lusaka! Unfortunately, the New Day bus is still out of commission, so instead our family headed to Choma this morning to hop onto one of the "big buses." Here we are at the bus station!

This boy was happy - Spiderman under his arm and a fritter in each hand!

A selfie at the bus station as we waited...and waited...for our bus!

We bought tickets for the big yellow Shalom bus ($75 for our family, if you were wondering) that was supposed to leave at 10am..which means 11:30am! It wasn't bad though - we were of course the only "white" people on the bus, and the driver gave us the back row of seats which were 5 across which worked great for our family. We did hear some mumbles about being "chased away because of the whites," but that's ok. ;) We passed the time taking naps, playing ipads, reading on the computer, etc. It was HOT, and it took us about 5 hours to get to the big city of Lusaka.

We hopped off the bus in Lusaka and walked about 1/4 mile to the mall where Wes & Laurie were waiting. After an amazing coconut latte (vacation baby!!!) and some VERY spicy Nando's chicken, we squeezed into the truck to head to the Flying Mission Guesthouse. There was a little drama there as there was a fire ant infestation outside our door which resulted in our family ending up in the bathroom throwing our clothes off and screaming..but once that was calmed down we got the kids into bed, are enjoying some Wifi, and are headed off for a last meeting with Wes & Laurie. A taxi will pick us up tomorrow morning at 5am and the adventures will continue!