Today is #MarketFriday, a project initiated by 
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I had a specific topic in mind for my #MarketFriday post this week. But things worked out differently...
Let's start this post off by showing the exchange rate of the USD/ZAR pair. At the time of writing this post, the exchange rate was R18.29 for $1.00.
Let's Go Spend Some Money.
My wife came home one day last week and wanted to know if we could go down to the North Beach area in Durban sometime over the weekend.
Apparently, she found a great special offer on a cotton product that she often uses. She found it in a group that she is part of on Whatsapp. She normally pays R25.00 ($1.37) for one packet.
But now she would be able to buy the same product in a pack of four packets for R20.00 ($1.09)...and it's exactly the same product. At that price, many of the ladies working with her in the office decided to put in their orders too.
We would be picking up the whole order.
The distributor lives in an apartment building a block away from North Beach in Durban.
A Visit to Mini Town?
I thought it would be a great idea as I was planning a visit to Mini Town on North Beach for a #MarketFriday post.
Here are two photos from a previous post where I shared some photos that I have taken from an elevated area in the park next to Mini Town.
Mini Town is literally a block away from where we would be collecting the order for my wife.
All was going according to plan until we came around the corner to approach North Beach.
With the Durban Beaches being closed due to contamination, I thought it would be relatively quiet.
Well...far from it. Seeing that people were not allowed to go into the water, the area just above the beach, known as the Marine Parade, was a hive of activity.
For someone who doesn't like crowds, this was chaos, as Mini Town was right in the middle of all this activity.
Yet, I still took a slow drive down along the Marine Parade and we were able to find parking right in front of Mini Town.
I thought I'll give it a shot and see if Mini Town wasn't too crowded. Maybe we could go along as planned.
The entrance fee would be R40.00 per person. So, for the two of us, we would be looking at R80.00 ($4.37).
As I was taking out my card to pay, I just heard the comment from inside... "cash only"...
Well, that was enough for me to decide that "Mini Town was not going to happen today..."
There was no way that I was going to first look for a place where I could draw cash now and then come back into this chaos.
Change of Plan.
We got back into the car and had a quick brainstorming session and decided to head out to Amanzimtoti.
Arriving in Amanzimtoti, we headed out to the main beach in Amanzimtoti.
We found parking in the parking area of the SPUR which is located just above the main beach.
We took a walk down to the beach.
Just below the SPUR, but still above the beach area, there were also people hanging out, just relaxing, with some entertaining themselves in a little "outdoor gym" on some of the training equipment...
But going down to the beach, also with no swimming aloud, was a pleasure.
I took this photo, looking out over the beach and the southern part of Amanzimtoti and Warner Beach further down in the background.
It was a cool, cloudy day. Being late in the afternoon and with the clouds getting lower and thicker, it was getting darker quickly, but it gave me the opportunity to get some nice shots.
This is another shot of the Amanzimtoti area with some rocks in the surf in the foreground.
More rocks on the beach...
No, I didn't forget...this is a #MarketFriday post...lol. And not spending any money at Mini Town, I decided to treat my wife to a meal at the SPUR. So yes, I was still about to spend some money, so I believe this will still qualify as a #MarketFriday post...am I right?
But just before we leave the beach...just one last look at some waves coming in...(I just love the ocean...can you tell...lol?)
Before we came down to the beach, while we were still sitting in the car just after I parked the car, I decided to see if I could maybe get a good deal at the SPUR.
The service provider for my mobile phone is Vodacom and I have their app on my phone. They often offer nice specials and vouchers on their app.
I browsed through their app and found that if I would buy a SPUR voucher on the app for R100.00 ($5.47), I would get the value of R112.00 ($6.12). I bought the voucher.
Okay...back to the present (on the beach).
We decided it was time to move up towards the SPUR to get something to eat.
Coming up from the beach, we had to climb these stairs to get to street level where the SPUR is.
As we arrived at the top, the well-known logo of the SPUR was clearly visible as wall art on the wall right next to us...
We went inside and after a long day, we both first enjoyed a nice, ice-cold beer.
We then both decided on a delicious double-cheese burger. The cheeseburgers were on special, with a soda of your choice included in the price for the burger. My wife decided on a lemonade and I chose to have a Coke.
The image above was taken with my mobile phone. I only saw that my camera was also in this photo after I have taken it...lol.
The total amount on the bill worked out to R330.00 ($18.04), but having paid for the voucher already, I only had to make a payment of R250.00 ($13.67), which included a tip for our friendly waitress.
That means that I have spent a total of R350.00 ($19.14) including the tip for the waitress. I calculated her tip on the total amount of the bill, not on the amount that I had to pay (excluding the voucher). I felt it would not be fair to the waitress to calculate her tip on the bill amount less the value of the voucher...
As you can see, I did end up spending more than what I would have spent if we did go to Mini Town as planned originally. But so be it...lol.
And that's it for today, folks.
Thank you for reading my post! I do appreciate it!