It was weather for oysters at the Box which bears their name, weather the oysters would enjoy: wet, cold, miserable.
Which should have spoiled my stay at the Oyster Box, for don't we all go to Umhlanga Rocks for sun, sea, surf and the bikinis? Or do we?
Rainy grey weather, virtually confined me to my quarters. Mind you quarters was a superb room which looked out on to a gloomy sea. My initial excitement was somewhat tempered by the great grey expanse before me, framed only by that iconic red-and-white striped lighthouse.
"It was built in only four days," the Oyster Box's general manager told me quietly. "And is still in good working order, warning ships of shoals."
Like every other thing at the Oyster Box, there is a story to everything.
Luckily, I had brought four books to read for my three-day stay. Or so I thought, for as it happened not a single one was opened, there was so much to do.
Firstly, the three bars and three restaurants called.
Oh, but before that, there was high tea to be enjoyed, to which I had invited friends from Durban, a city which must be the world's biggest port without a decent five-star-plus hotel.
Tea was splendid stuff. Terribly colonial, in the Palm Court, it was also remarkably friendly, a sort of family treat with staff who smiled and giggled and served us as if we were all personal friends. Very different from Joburg's efficient detachment.
There's a story to that: general manager Wayne Coetzer (there's a story to him, too) says: "I was told to get my staff from other five-star hotels in the area, but as there are none, I first looked for qualified staff, but as there were none again, I selected staff on friendliness and personality, and we trained them."
It paid great dividends. Staff are happy, friendly, helpful.
High tea was so "nice" my friends left just before 7pm - when family arrived for dinner.
We started with oysters at the Oyster Bar, then curry and prawns at the restaurant. Delicious, as expected at an expensive hotel, for the Oyster Box is not inexpensive.
What amazed us was the constant stream of visitors, beautiful young women with handsome lads looking like lifesavers with beach babes, arriving and chatting away and then disappearing upstairs.
"That's the Lighthouse Bar," our waiter explained. "Popular with the young crowd."
Popular's not the word for it. After dinner we wanted to go up, and were politely turned away because it was "too full" - before my hotel resident's card sneaked us in.
Packed to the rafters with 20-somethings drinking purple, blue, red, green, orange drinks with names I'd never heard of. Having a ball, in a big bar that overlooks the Lighthouse, the Indian Ocean, the moonlit horizon and clouds settling over the sea.
The large patio adjoining the bar was relatively empty despite the crowd inside, except for a few damp and bedraggled smokers braving the wet to pollute themselves.
This bar rocks! Not with the ancient regime and old money, as does the fine dining restaurant downstairs, but with new, vibrant, beautiful people. It reeks of youth, of new dates, wide-eyed girls with overeager boys buying them cocktails.
Everybody arrives at the Oyster Box with a story. How they stayed there in the old days, or had dinner there with their folks, perhaps came dinner-dancing once upon a time with their grandparents.
And they all "recognise" things, like the furniture.
Wayne laughs. "We don't tell them, just smile nicely, but actually only 11 percent of the hotel is still here. We chose new stuff that looked like the old, just to tickle the nostalgia."
My sister-in-law insisted some furniture was original.
"No, sorry, none of it," I was assured the next day.
Wayne has been at the hotel for eight years. He was at the old Oyster Box, lived through the restoration, and opened the new one.
"It was amazing," he said. "I was on a bridge in London and met a man who told me he had inherited this place in Umhlanga and was going to bulldoze it into the sea as the property was valuable but the hotel worthless.
"I told him he couldn't do that because of its history; convinced him we could make a success if it was refurbished, and he agreed to do it.
"After that the hotel was sold to the Tollmans, and now it is the best hotel on the coast, personally looked after by Mrs Tollman, because this is where her husband proposed to her."
Everything has a story.
"See the lights in the Grill Room, the three chandeliers? She bought them from the Savoy in London, as it was being refurbished. And the ceiling fans? They are inspired by Raffles in Singapore as people say we have a similar flavour."
Conveying the flavour of the Oyster Box is difficult. When the sun came out on the final morning of my stay, the flavour went all blue swimming pool, drinks with umbrellas in them, bikinis on sunny loungers, smell of suntan lotion, breakfast at the infinity pool overlooking a sparkling sea, reading the Sunday papers in splendid luxury on red-and-white striped pool cushions.
The previous afternoon was "Spa Time". The spa has a huge menu from which I chose "reflexology" and enjoyed a therapist manipulating my feet for an hour. Daft stuff really, somebody twiddles your toes and tells you your kidneys need de-toxing.
Pleasant, like reading your horoscope, I'm just not sure I am a believer.
Like the coloured drinks in the Lighthouse Bar, spas have things mysterious to me like "Nuvola Dry Flotation" and "Colour Therapy Bed", or a "Rungu or Calabash or Bamboo Massage".
These things frighten me, but make some people salivate.
A beautiful place for beautiful people, but intimidating for me.
The spa does have a Hammam, all white marble with places to sit, big bowls to wash, steam everywhere with multi-jet showers, which I did enjoy. Normal steam bath stuff in a great setting, really.
On Saturday night we did fine dining in the top restaurant, the Grill Room. The food was fabulous, but it was the people who really impressed.
My companion Jo-Anne wanted me to try the famous pork belly. It was not on the menu. The waiter returned a little later to say it would be available, no trouble at all.
We started with a dozen oysters, grown in the hotel's own beds. Must be big beds because everyone eats oysters - for breakfast, lunch, dinner and with drinks. They are R20 each everywhere, except at breakfast when you have as many oysters as you can manage with a bottomless glass of champagne, all included in the continental price.
Even before the oysters that evening we were served a thimbleful of hot mushroom soup to tempt palates, and after the oysters, ostrich carpaccio, before the main course. Favourite mains are Black Forest Duck, Cerise Jubilee and special steaks.
The maitre d' is a chap called Henry, old school; he said he was now serving the grandchildren of the people who were loyal patrons. A lovely man.
New school is the sommelier, Thato Goimane. He is young, suave, erudite, hugely polite as he suggests wines to partner your food, listing the complexities of the tastes in language that is poetic, yet easily understood.
He was at Joburg's famous Auberge Michel restaurant, and tells me people in Umhlanga, white and black alike, are far friendlier and much more willing to listen than the somewhat snobbish Joburgers.
I suggest it could be the atmosphere of the place, the family-friendly flavour, and like a good host, he agrees with me.
He convinces us to try a "completely unwooded, very light Chardonnay" followed by some Jordan Rosé and then suggests the Pinot Noir from Tollman's estates with the pork belly. "It is really good, 2008 was a wonderful year all round, but specially at Bouchard Finlayson..."
He is just delightful, actually a boykie from Soweto with a big smile, operating in the kingdom of the Zulu. So he has brushed up on his Zulu, admits to struggling a little with the speed at which some Indians talk, but is "getting there" he says with a laugh.
Of course, the food was fabulous, as was the table, which has a story. It was at this table that Mr Tollman popped the big question.
In the hall of the hotel is its, well, hallmark, a huge painted tile work. Its story is that it was brought into the country in separate bundles by the first owner's friends and relatives, who were all asked to bring back a parcel of tiles when they visited Portugal. Took a few years. It is original, as are the little tiles on the staircase.
Besides fine dining in the Grill Room, another special dining room has a glass ceiling across which patrons to the Oyster Bar walk, women in skirts perhaps unwittingly, for the view upwards by guests seated at the sunken cellar table is unrestricted.
Wayne's quick tour of the function rooms includes the Union Castle room with menus from those mailships - including a model Pendennis Castle, a ship on which I travelled as a youth - and the Durban July room, with its photographs of all the July winners from who-knows-when. Its story is that the then owner Mr Tollman won enough money on one race to buy Mrs Tollman's engagement diamond.
There is a splendid library room which only opens with your room key-card; a wedding-like all-white Pearl room used to tie that knot; and a Shell room, which opens with the Pearl to seat 160 people.There is even a tiny cinema, seating only 24, perfect for a showing of Zulu! before visiting the nearby battlefields where the British were given such a klap by the Zulu regiments.
And paintings on walls all around the place: bright, vibrant, simple yet not naive, each telling a tale - like the one in my room by Sibusiso Duma of a man with two women at his sides, seen from the back. He has a hand on each backside. One woman has a green bag on her head, the other a red one. Funny, lovely.
There seem to be about 100 paintings, mostly by contemporary black artists, and a complete collection of woodcut prints by Cecil Skotness of the killing of King Shaka, with a commentary wall explaining each work.
There is not much to say about my room besides that it was wonderful, looked out to sea, with the red-and-white lighthouse to the side.
The bathroom is decorated in beige and light brown tiles, the marble bath big enough for me to immerse my six foot frame from toes to shoulders, a great luxury not always available even in top luxury hotels.
There's Internet, an interactive TV that even lets you select Beethoven or Chopin if you want classical music instead of the normal television shlock on offer.
The grounds include a hot pool and a cold one set amid palm trees, which also have a story. I never tried the hot pool like I never tried the Chukka Bar, the only place where smoking is allowed. Its story is that the old bar had a book for bets, from which regulars would dice first to which raindrop would win a race down a window. Probably illegal, it is to be resuscitated, I'm told with a wink.
It is sad that Durban, as a prime tourist destination, does not have really upmarket five-star-plus hotels. Surely the economy of the world's 12th biggest port could sustain a few?
The Hilton is probably the best Durban has to offer currently but it is cold and formulaic - you could be anywhere in the world.
The Oyster Box will fit superbly into the niche of a hotel for people who don't really care about cost as long as what they get is simply the best. Yet it still retains the personal touch, that feeling that you are special, not just another number.
On its doorstep are the beaches of Umhlanga, Gateway's enormous shopping mall, the dolphin coast, KwaZulu-Natal's parks, the new King Shaka airport, even the magnificent Barn swallow show of five million swallows roosting each night in about 15 minutes at a small reedbed in Mount Moreland.
There's a story there too, but perhaps enough stories already for one read. Visit The Oyster Box yourself and gather your own host of stories to tell.
