Market Friday - Finding a Nice Deal in Durban North.

Today is #MarketFriday, a project initiated by @dswigle, and this post is my contribution to this project for this week.

To learn more about this project and participate, visit this post by @dswigle.

The South African economy is far from being healthy at the moment.

There are many factors contributing to it...such as crime and corruption. Then there is also our government's attitude/approach toward international affairs and what is currently happening in the world.

But this post will definitely not be about politics and I am not getting involved in any political arguments either. I know what I have experienced in my lifetime and on more than one occasion it came way too close for comfort to my family too. So, I have reached the point where I feel it is senseless to talk about or argue about it. If you can do something to change a situation, then do it. Otherwise, turn around and walk away.

I'll end my little rant with what I said to my wife the other day...

I said to my wife that we have such a beautiful country...I absolutely love this country...but unfortunately, we also have to deal with the "human element".

But enough of the negativity...

To get to today's positive topic, I have to touch on one topic mentioned above though...

The economy...

Our inflation rate, the food inflation rate, in particular, is at an extremely high level at the moment.

But last weekend we found a very good deal.

We like using "long life" milk because by buying fresh milk you can never be sure about the quality of the milk. Buying fresh milk, we often find that we need to use it quickly. Within a day or two. If you don't use it quickly, it goes sour.

So, "long life" milk is more expensive indeed, but in the long run, it often works out cheaper over time.

The average price for 1L "long life" milk will start at about R14.00 per liter (which is a very good price), and then it ranges up to over R20.00 per liter.

With today's exchange rate of R18.24 for $1.00 at the time of writing, that means it will cost us anything from $0.77 to $1.00+ for 1 liter of "long life" milk.

But we have a nice group of shops here in KwaZulu Natal, called KOS. In Afrikaans we call it the "KOS winkel". Their Afrikaans slogan is "KOS...wat minder kos". And in English, it reads "KOS...where food costs less".

"Kos", means food. "Winkel" means shop.

My wife also belongs to the Whatsapp group of various of their outlets.

Last Saturday morning we were still taking it easy when one of these Whatsapp messages came through from their Durban North branch.

They just received stock of "long life" milk and were selling them at R60.00 ($3.29) per six-pack. That means R10.00 ($0.55) per liter.

Guess what was our next step?

Yes, straight into the car and heading for KOS in Durban North.

KOS in Durban North is situated in a little shopping complex on one of the main routes running through one of the suburban areas of Durban North.

This is when we decided to pay a visit to Virginia Beach which I shared about on Wednesday.

I took the following screenshot of Google Maps. I hope this will give you more perspective on where KOS is (marked with a yellow square to the left) versus Virginia Beach where we wanted to go too after getting the milk. I also marked Virginia Beach with a yellow square which you will see toward the right of the image.

Arriving at our destination, KOS in Durban North, I realized that I would have to relax before I even get out of the car. It was busy and as you know by now...I'm not one for crowds.

There was no parking in front of the shop. I dropped my wife off to get into the shop while I was searching for parking.

I found parking some distance away from the shop.

This is when I got the idea to use this opportunity to take some photos for today's post.

Looking further up the road, further away from the shop (I was lucky to find a space here)...

Looking down in the direction where I had to walk toward the shop...

I started the walk down to the shop.

Coming around the corner, I took the next shot of all the vehicles parked on the pavement with my mobile phone.

As I approached the shop, I noticed that most of the activity was taking place toward the right.

I took the next shot of the building. You can see the entrance to KOS to the left in the image. Most of the activity was taking place at the furthest end of the building.

I went to the end of the building to see what was going on and I found a little craft market with people having various products on display.

It was mainly the Indian community who had their products on display.

The place was really crowded and there was no way I was going to go in there...lol.

Next to me, to my left was a nice little coffee shop, The Bell Inn Cafe.

What caught my attention though, was the tree to my right. I waited for a quiet moment, went down the steps, and quickly took the next shot.

I then went to KOS to see if my wife has found what we came for.

I didn't want to take any photos with the camera inside the shop, so I took the following shots with my mobile phone.

I took this shot just before entering the shop.

It was also busy inside the shop, but fortunately not as crowded as at the market next door.

I found one aisle where there were no other people and took the next two shots inside the shop.

Thank goodness...my wife was already standing in the queue at the cashier. We were just in time and she managed to get the last two six packs of milk that they had in stock...in a matter of between 30 minutes to 45 minutes since we received the Whatsapp message.

We paid R120.00 ($6.58)for the two packs (12 L) of milk.

That should last us for a couple of days and we were happy with the price that we had to pay.

From there, we were off to the beach!

And that's all for today folks!

Thank you for reading my post! I do appreciate it!