A long but by all accounts entertaining flight saw 9 new lions on tour land in Durban on Tuesday afternoon. After a surprisingly even fight between a fancy dressed lion and zebra in the arrivals hall we managed to pile everyone into the Pepper fun bus and head straight for a local friend of the team's house on the beach in Durban North for a welcome braai and a look at the Southern Kings vs. Lions match.

The rugby was tight (with the Lions edging it in the end to maintain their unbeaten Tour leading up to the 1st Test on Saturday) but the beers were free-flowing. The hours passed fast and by morning there were reports of some fairly outrageous, whilst fair, behaviour and incidents that are better dealt with here by people who were there. So here follows some initial thoughts on the first 48 hours by one of the Lions Tourists themselves, Alistair "Gizzard" Firth:

Where to start? This is our T-O-R blog of 2009 Lions Tour written from a venue outside Durban as team 'bridge prepare to jump out of a plane on their skydives. This is Day 2 and so far the trip is exceeding all expectations, with deep-sea fishing, braaing, water parking, freestyling and general dominance. Although unfair to name names here the bar was set high on the first night and shows no signs of dropping.

Phenomenal work from Pips and Doug to keep the team together and with great activities to keep our little brains occupied. Assuming all survive this skydive business we can look forward to the launch of our one-time-only new Durban night; "FUNKY, NEON, CHOCOLATE CANDY" at Harvey's. Hopefully further updates to follow...