Day 9.5 Our Adventure Getting to The Gateway in Durban
We left Nomads Backpackers and caught a minibus to The Workshop and another one to The Gateway Theatre of Shopping, which offered a combination of shopping and entertainment. The minibus driver said he could take us most of the way there, but he would have to drop us off at the robots (the street light), since he was not able to go past them. We pretty much got dropped off on the shoulder of the freeway with the center in sight. However, from our location, we couldn’t tell how to actually get into the area. We could go up the freeway or down the freeway.
We chose down the freeway, which to sum it up, was wrong. However, instead of turning around, Cory was determined to keep walking that way with the possibility of hopping the fence. The big deal to him about finding a “shortcut,” I’ll never understand. Cory and Tina wandered their way along the fence until Cory saw a steep path in the dirt in a broken portion of the fence. I waited down by the shoulder of the freeway and seriously considered hitchhiking the opposite way to the entrance. When Cory gave the thumbs up at the top, Tina made her way up as well. With a huge sigh, I reluctantly followed them. The incline was short and easy, but halfway up, you had to hold onto the fence to help pull yourself up as well as to keep from sliding down. When I was kid, I would have loved that kind of thing, but I was feeling to old for that type of adventure.
At the top, we found ourselves in a trendy, metropolitan housing area. We walked several blocks uphill past new-looking townhouses and high-end salons. A little ways past the housing area, we found the parking lot and garage leading to the center. The Gateway was quite a large mall. There were several levels, the world’s tallest indoor rock wall, an IMAX, cinema, expensive jewelry stores, and the clientele were predominately white. Near the rock wall section of the mall, there was a whole area dedicated to the surfing and punk crowd. That section had dimmed lighting and a completely different theme distinguishing it from the rest of the mall. I spotted a Fego next to Exclusive Books, so we went there again for lunch. Our waiter was pretty terrible. He kept disappearing for periods of time, and Tina had to repeatedly ask him for more water, even going to find him with our glasses in hand. We went our own ways after lunch with the plan to meet for coffee in an hour and a half. I moseyed around the mall, but I spent the most time in the bookstore discovering new books that I wanted to read. I asked one of the sales associates if the African books could be found in the States, since I didn’t want to lug a bunch of books back home. He advised me to check out Amazon.com because they had just opened a business in Cape Town. I found my companions in the store with me because we all enjoyed reading. 
In the outdoor courtyard of The Gateway, there were several restaurants available. We went to Circus Circus, and instead of ordering coffee, I ended up ordering a yummy chocolate, caramel cake with a Flake Bar on top. Afterward, we took the minibus back to The Workshop, and with the help of a nice girl on our minibus, we got onto another minibus that could take us to Berea Center. The clouds started to roll in during our trip, and it started to rain. We got dropped off in the rain, and to give us a moment to regroup and figure out where exactly we were, we hurried inside the Berea Center. During that time, it started to rain much harder. Looking at our map, our hostel looked not too far away- a little down the freeway and down the street that it was located on. The walk took us longer than expected, and we were drenched by the time we got to Nomads.
Tina wanted to go to dinner for her last night in Durban, so we milled around before walking to the Musgrave Center just down the road. It was naturally raining again, but we sacrificed for our friend. Tina had chosen the Mustang Spur for her final meal, and I was lamenting on the fact that I didn’t take photos of each of the Spurs where we had eaten. We had entered the center from a different location than we had the previous day, so we were surprised to discover that the place was much larger than we had originally thought. We found a Mugg & Bean restaurant/coffee shop, and upon taking a look at the menu, Tina decided to eat there instead. The service was quite good, and the food wholly satisfying. I chose the chicken mushroom pot pie, and it happily reminded me of home.
Let go of fear . . . 