There is more to South Africa than Cape Town!

I lived for a while in the Cape and I must agree it is truly beautiful and full of life but not the be all and end all to South Africa, come on now. I keep reading articles expounding the virtues of the Cape and Cape Town in particular so much so that it made me stir my stumps to let you all in on my little secret… There is more to South Africa than Cape Town!

I live in KwaZulu Natal the garden province of South Africa, a subtropical region of lush hills and valleys, and a coastline washed by the warm Indian Ocean.

I think Hillcrest which is just outside Durban, and where I live, must have just about the most perfect climate I have encountered anywhere. We get weather but only of the moderate type here no frost but it can snow on the mountains just an hour away, mainly sunny days but without the coastal humidity during the hottest months. Believe it or not but we can see the sea from up here and it’s only a 40 minute drive down the hill. We enjoy cool nights after even in the hottest days and our gardens abound with everything from

Monkeys and azaleas in my garden

aloes to azaleas and pansies to palm trees, a delight to any garden lover. Doesn’t it sound great to you too? But I have only told you about Hillcrest which is almost a suburb of Durban so let’s look a bit further afield to Durban and KwaZulu Natal the province.
Although the smallest of South Africa’s provinces I believe KZN has much more diversity to offer than all the rest put together, maybe I’m biased – find out for yourself.

Let’s start with Durban a bustling city port with a delightful mix of architecture; in fact people come from all over the world just to see its beautifully kept art deco buildings, apparently the best outside Florida! I certainly have my favourite streets in Musgrave which I always detour along.

Further afield we have not one but two World Heritage sites of outstanding natural beauty; iSimangaliso Wetland Park and uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park.

www.southafrica.info succinctly says of iSimangaliso “… Here, and nowhere else in the world, can one find hippopotamuses, crocodiles and sharks sharing the same waters.” iSimangaliso’s wide variety of ecosystems and natural habitats provide for an amazing diversity of species in the area.

With its lakes, lagoons, freshwater swamps and grasslands, iSimangaliso supports more species of animal than the better-known and much larger Kruger National Park and the Okavango Delta including the country’s largest population of hippos and crocodiles, giant Leatherback turtles, black rhino, leopards, and a vast array of bird and marine life.

Great signpost

According to Living Lakes, more than 530 species of birds use the wetland and other areas of the Lake St Lucia region. These waters are also graced by 20,000 greater flamingos, 40,000 lesser flamingoes, as well as thousands of ducks and with 36 species of amphibians, the highest diversity in South Africa.
If the hasn’t blown you away yet, hang on we’re only warming up.

The uKhahlamba (barrier of spears) Drakensberg Park, has Africa’s highest mountain range south of Kilimanjaro. “The site’s diversity of habitats protects 2 153 plant species, endemic and globally threatened. The park is also home to 299 recorded bird species and among the park’s 48 species of mammal are the threatened eland and endemic grey rhebuck. For more than 4 000 years these mountains were home to the indigenous San people, who created the largest and most concentrated collection of rock art in Africa. Dating back about 2 400 years there are some 600 sites with collectively 35 000 individual images in the Drakensberg. The artists used clay, burnt wood and ochre oxides to paint images that have lasted longer than anything we have painted since, I think.

You will also find the world’s second-highest waterfall in the Drakensberg. With a drop of 947 metres, the Tugela Falls, are easily viewed from the main road after heavy rains and great for ice climbing in winter!

But we are not content with astounding beauty alone, the Zulu Kingdom also offers culture to our visitor in the form of anything from a cultural village sleep over where you can absorb Zulu history and lifestyle, to arts and crafts at sophisticated galleries and art shops. Country studios in the Midlands can be visited on one of four art trails and enthusiastic roadside vendors everywhere sell anything from wire toys of animals, people, musical instruments and bicycles to traditional clay pots and carvings. Zulu beading has also exploded into a huge international industry. Where they were once made from organic materials like seeds, seashells, ivory and animal teeth, now glass beads can be found on anything from cutlery to clothing. I love it to pieces.

Morning mountains

Still on the cultural trail we have an area called Battlefields where you can listen to our storytellers take you back to the many historic battles that have been fought, from the Battle of Isandlwana to the siege of Ladysmith or Rorke’s Drift where soldier bravery earned the greatest number of Victoria Crosses ever awarded at a single battle and was recreated in the famous motion picture “Zulu” featuring Michael Caine

The countryside hasn’t changed much in KwaZulu Natal from the days of King Shaka so you can savor the whole bush atmosphere while looking for the really wild animals in a BIG 5 conservancy or a Reserve teeming with wildlife waiting for you to fid them. Sounds easy until you try it but with luck you will be able to see: White and Black Rhino, Elephant, Buffalo, Giraffe, Zebra, Blue Wildebeest, Antelope you might even be lucky enough to catch a the predators like the Lion, Leopard, and hyena especially if you go with a Ranger as they are brilliant at knowing where the animals are hiding out and can tell you all the interesting stuff. To be different you could join a Rhino Darting Safari or an Elephant Back Safari to really see the bush from a different perspective

So much to do! Have you the time to do it?

There are golf courses, horse trails, scenic self-drives, trout streams for fishing, mountain climbing and abseiling activities. City cycle tours, crocodile farms, diamond tours and for the Rufty Tufty even a four by four ride up the Sani Pass to the highest pub!

So do you believe me now? There is a whole lot more than the Cape and I really enjoy everything that KwaZulu Natal has to offer so why not treat yourself – Come and enjoy the best of South Africa all found in its tiniest province KwaZulu Natal. Join me on my Beach Bush and Berg Painting Holidays or adventure on your own, whatever, just get yourself here and see for yourself that I tell no lie when I say this province has been seriously overlooked.

PAINTING TIP

“Draw as often as you can”

Thanks to Andrew James A&I March 2006 for this great tip.

Please pass me around! The more folk that read this, the more fun it is to produce other letters. May I trouble you to share it with anyone you feel might enjoy it? They will appreciate your effort, and so will I. They can get future copies free by clicking the link below. I want to get more emails like this

The Berg or uKhahlamba

“The Berg” is a stunningly beautiful World Heritage site.The Drakensberg mountains got their name from the Voortrekkers because the ridges resemble a dragons back but the Zulus call them uKhahlamba the “Barrier of Spears”
Whatever you call it, the Berg is unadulterated beauty and perfect for any artist who wants dramatic paintings.

The Drakensberg is located in the west of KwaZulu-Natal along the border with Lesotho, it stretches 150 kilometres, and the peaks are a massive basalt cap on top of sedimentary rocks formed 150-million years ago.

Usually sunny, the weather is quite capricious and can change in the blinking of an eye so go prepared, as the scouts say. Generally speaking the summers are warm and wet, up to 800-2000mm of rain can fall a year here, it has been known to thunder down in a storm of lightening and rain and clear just as quickly. Misty clouds can pull down over the peaks and leave a hiker blinded until it lifts again.

A visit in the cold dry winter between April and September is best. The nights are frosty with a daytime atmosphere crisp and invigorating. Above 2000m you are most likely to see snow; however it can snow at any time of the year up on the peaks ( Check out my previous blog about our most recent snow!)

Hikers and walkers delight in the many trails through the mountains, there are some fairly extensive maps which show the trails to make your path easier to travel.

THE OLDEST ART GALLERY

4000 years ago the San Bushmen painted 520 pictures on the walls of caves and rock shelters and despite all those years of weather most of them are still clearly visible. You can hike, with a guide, to view them and see a world unchanged in all these years but accessible to only a few… will you be one of those few lucky people to be transported back to the beginning of painting and the lives of the little guys who made these incredible masterpieces.I’ve been lucky enough to see several sites and each time they really do make your mind scrabble back and try to imagine their life as it was then. There are a few locations where the San are continuing with their life very similar to those days but the modern world keeps getting too close so I’m not sure how long it will be until their life is only to be read in history books. A real shame but we always seem to think the grass is greener on the other side don’t we?

Click here to see some more rock paintings

Or better still come and see them for yourself