Lost and found

Kylie and I had gone to South Beach for an early morning surfing session. This beach is a little more timid when the surf is raging. It was a beautiful day with some nice waves. We went through the now well rehersed routine of stripping off the wetsuits, drying off, and loading up the boards. This was the morning of the big swell that struck Durban in early November, so we drove down the Marine Parade to watch the surfers and big waves.

We finally made it back to the house a few hours later. We were unloading the boards and wetsuits when we realized we had left Kylie's wetsuit at South Beach. This was a big loss as we had just bought her wetsuit only a month or two ago, and wetsuits arent exactly cheap. We had to go back and at least look, but we had a feeling the wetsuit was long gone. We had been away for about 2 hours, so we figured it was already sold to a pawn shop.

We pulled up to the beach to have a look, and sure enough, there was no wetsuit to be found. We were about to get into the car when the car park attendant hollared said "Hay Siss, you leave a swim suit and towel here. Yes, I knew dat was you..." He had found the wetsuit and hid it in one of the buildings nearbye.

I should note that car park attendants are somewhat novel to South Africa. Because of the constant threat of car theft, they watch over your car while its parked. They often poor men, just happy to have a paying job. Sometimes, their only income is the few Rands you hand them as a tip as you leave the lot.

Well, this car park attendant earned himself a hefty tip on this day. We were so happy to discover that the wetsuit hadnt been lifted. This obviously happened a few weeks ago, but I wanted to go back and right about for a few reasons. First, it was an incident that restored our faith in this city that is often notorious for its crime rate. Second, I wrote about this very beach, how a possibly drunk, very sketchy guy offered to wash our car. Finally, I thought it kind of tied into the recent post about finding the cell phone. Regardless, we were pumped to have the wetsuit, and the car park guy was also pretty excited to get a nice tip. That day, everybody won.