Posts From South Africa

Today we docked in the town of Richards Bay in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It has an impressive harbour from which is shipped large quantities of coal and aluminum. In 2009 it had the worlds largest coal export facility, interestingly a crown now held by Newcastle NSW. Unfortunately, and I am surprised by this, we did not provide any photos of the port or city. I guess that is because we were both too captivated by the images we collected from the days visit to the Hluhluwe Game Reserve.

Today we were in the city of Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal South Africa. The first impression of the city from the ship as we docked was that it looked like a modern prosperous place. It is a large port, the busiest in sub-Saharan Africa, with a newish Cruise Ship Terminal named after Nelson Mandela, with a lot of grandious buildings and many highrise buildings in the city. However once on our bus for the journey to Tala Game Reserve we saw a bit more of the underside of the city such as large numbers of makeshift and delapidated vendor stalls lining most streets and almost every open space, including a bridge to nowwhere.

Nothing to say - a day at sea.

We were at sea all day to day only arriving into the port of Cape Town as sun set. The sunset was glorious and left a wonderful red/orange after glow on the horizon. As we approached the port we had some great views of the mountains behond the city which include the well known Table Mountain and The Lions Head.

The stop in Cape Town is the end point of the East Africa cruise and the start of West Africa Cruise and as a result most passengers are disembarking and a whole new bunch are boarding. A similar thing happened in Mumbai which is where the East Afrca cruise started. On such change-over days there are usually no excursions organized by the cruise ship, but by popular demand one was organized for today. It was a quick tour of the city center, followed by a ride in the cable car to the top of Table Mountain followed by a drive along the beaches of Cape Town. As you can see in the photos below the weather gods smiled on us for this activity, with a beautiful orange sunrise followed by a warm day with bright blue sky. The cable car ride up and down Table Mountain was less delightful as there was a huge crowd at the mountain and the ride up had us queuing for 2 hours. But still the views from the top were worth the hassle.