Getting up at 6:30 AM is murder, especially on a Saturday morning after spending the previous night drinking nasty cheap beer. Everything is so dark and cold. You look outside the window, but you can't judge what the weather is going to be like because the sun hasn't risen yet. I had to get up though, any minute my mate was coming over with two surf skis and we were going for an early paddle.

Arriving at the beach, we were shocked at how perfect the conditions were. The sea at Addington was as flat as a lake, the air completely still and the water warm and clear. We literally walked out past the breaking waves, calmly climbed on the boats and paddled off towards the many fisherman and sea birds clustered past Vetch's pier around a shoal of fish.

Durban is beautiful at that time in the morning. From a kilometre out, with the sun shining low across the horizon, the beachfront lights up in such a way that's it's difficult to recall any bad attributes of the city. It all seems so surreal and peaceful.

The surf ski has two pedals which control the rudder, and is moulded in such a way that it doesn't fill with water when it capsizes (unlike a canoe). It's tricky to balance, and as a beginner you'll find yourself constantly leaning side to side trying to stabilise yourself. Something that will come with experience, my learned friend assures me. I sure hope so, I thought to myself, because it seemed like I was using more energy trying to stay on it than I was on moving forward.

As we paddled up the coast, we spotted a lonesome dolphin surfacing a few meters ahead. We moved towards him, and within seconds he was right underneath my boat, crossing my path a few meters below me. I stepped on the rudder and turned to give chase, thinking he would scare and run off.

As I aligned myself with his path, I realised he was in fact loving the attention, surfacing again and again at a mere arm's length from the end of my paddle. For five or ten minutes we followed each other around, him gracefully cutting through the water, changing course with the flick of his tail; and me clumsily flopping my paddle and constantly over steering my rudder as I tried to keep up with him. I noticed he had a jagged dorsal fin – maybe the result of being caught in a shark net?

It was nothing like thisThinking back on it now, I regret not jumping off my boat and swimming alongside him. They say it's therapeutic, swimming with dolphins.

After a while he grew tired of flouting his supreme swimming ability, and I simply grew tired. We should head back, I said to my friend – it had been an hour or so.

We turned to face the shore; and as the dolphin bobbed away back out to sea, I though about the bright sun at my back and the lukewarm, crystal clear water beneath me, and it occurred to me that it was in fact the middle of winter. The day after the solstice, to be exact. And I realised how incredibly lucky we are to live in such a great city.