Our first port in South Africa is Richard’s Bay, which is up north in the Kwazulu Natal (province). We went off on a safari to a game reserve about 1.5 hours north of the port. Our tour guide en route described the Zulu culture that we were driving through. Many of the homes had a circular out-building that was for their communion with their ancestors who were disinclined to “commune” with the living in the rectangular rooms in the main residences. Also much info was shared about the negotiations for a bride that start with a price of 11 cows and then proceed from there with much back and forth.

So we then arrive at the reserve.

Our safari guide is a Zulu, nice guy, well informed.

We cruise in a rig like this.

Here are some of the characters we saw that day.

This reserve only has three elephants – all females. The males are “too destructive” to the plants!

Rhinos travel as family groups – Mom, Dad, and the young-un.

Water buffalo like the mud hole.

Wart hogs also stick together.

Zebras were also hanging around the mud hole.

Nice lodge and lunch break.

Then we head down the coast to Port Elizabeth and went for another safari adventure. Here we had the Xhosa tribal group who are “clickers” with their language. Our guide on the bus trip was a Xhosa and entertained us with his ability to fold the clicks into his speech – very impressive!

The Pumba Private Game Reserve was our destination for that day. We started with a hippo show – about 12 of them hanging in the pond with lots of big mouth shows etc.

The impalas were numerous.

Lots of zebras.

And a bigger elephant population – about 17 – including several males. This little one is about 6 or 7 months old.

And here we have about 12 giraffe that have their eyes on a pair of lionesses that were nearby. When one of the lions started walking in their direction they all moved quickly away.

The lionesses decided to leave the scene and gave a friends a close-up look.

The giraffe were glad to see them go.

Here are some other characters keeping an eye on things.

They threw a dinner and dance party on the ship as we headed down to Cape Town.

We rounded the Cape with gale force winds and then were delayed by about four hours getting into port as it was closed due to the high winds. Here’s the view from our holding pattern. Table Mountain is hiding in the clouds and we still have not seen it.

Due to the delay, our tour down to the Cape of Good Hope was cancelled and we were lined up for a tour of Cape Town instead. Here’s a statue of Mandela at the balcony that he spoke from just after his release from prison in 1990 after 27 years of imprisonment.

And this is the church that Desmond Tutu preached from.

Parliament Building.

We strolled through the “Company’s Garden”, the oldest garden in South Africa, which was established by the Dutch East India Company in the 1650’s, originally intended to be a vegetable garden for passing ships.

Here’s an impressive tree in the Garden.

Cecil Rhodes has a statue in the Garden. Our black tour guide pointed out that as a colonizer, he is not very popular with the black folks.

I’m not sure what the significance of this guy and the horse is.

Next up was a drive through the Bo-Kaap neighborhood, formally known as the Malay Quarter. It is a former racially segregated area. Starting in 1763, the owner of the block of land built rental housing for his slaves which were mostly imported from Malaysia, Indonesia, and other parts of Africa. The area is about 60% Muslim. Colorful homes, and many signs supporting the Palestinians.

Our tour ended with a stop at a local nightclub with glass of champagne and great live African music.

Evening entertainment back on board …

And now we’re off to Namibia, followed by Senegal which I’ll save for the next page.

Cheers,

Charlie and Marty