The story starts in the year 2002 when I was enrolled at the University of Botswana (UB) as a second-year student. I met a person that would remain my eternal friend. She was a year junior to mine at the time in terms of our university enrolment. We would lose contact from the year 2004-2017 and re-connected, (this time around) now as adults and married people in their own right. Fast forward, the year is now 2019, and I am now living in Durban, South Africa, being a PhD student at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) having stayed in Durban for 6 months. I must say I wast still familiarising me with this beautiful tourist destination being Durban.
She (knowing that I was living in Durban) contacted and informed me that she and her hubby are planning a travel to Durban as tourists. They would want me to act as their local Guide notwithstanding the limited knowledge I had at the time of the Durban area. I accepted the challenge and from then on managed their ticket booking on their behalf.
When the day of their travel arrived, they requested that I travel to Johannesburg so that I meet-up with them halfway as that would make them feel comfortable knowing they are in the company of someone with local knowledge of South Africa cities. We met and travelled together, on a journey that fully captures the tourism saying that “getting there is part of fun”. The Johannesburg-Durban road trip presents magnificent and breath-taking landscapes of undulating hilly terrain, plains and the famous Drunkensburg range.
All these made their travel experience fun and enjoyable since they were seeing these for the first time. I did my best to explain all the landscape with the knowledge I had acquired from seeing and reading about them.
In Durban, I took them to the Lodge I had booked them into. Our daily site-seeing itinerary (for a week of their stay) involved me travelling from the Westville area to pick them from the Lodge and travelling to different places. Some of the places I took them too which met their travel cravings were The Pavillion Mall, Umhlanga Mall, Westville Campus (UKZN) where I am studying, South beach and the marvellous UShaka marine World.
The experiences from the travels were capture by video and photography. My visitors really enjoyed their stay and promised to return with their children in the near future, in particular, for UShaka Marine World which is rich with diverse travel experience for children and adults alike.
The most interesting thing about their travel experience wast that, My friend’s hubby whom we were meeting for the first time became my friend too, and we remain active in communication since then. One relationship led to the start of another, which now makes us family friends. I was pleased to know that I did really good as a Local Guide albeit with my limited knowledge of the area. With that, I am now open to offering my guide service and help to any traveller in Durban.