A New Day

My second day in Africa and it was still hard to believe I was actually there! Already I felt like the rest of the group was family, we were all meshing so well. I don't know how the people at WV managed it, but I don't think they could have put a better group of people together, it made me wonder if all the trips they do were so successful in their pairings.
At breakfast that morning we were asked if we would like to go to pheZulu Safari Park, which was on the way to Zinkwazi Lagoon, to which, of course, there was a resounding YES! It was only about 35 km out of Durban, so it did not take us long to arrive. It was a small, but very lovely 650 hectare private reserve. We started with a tour of their Nile Crocodile area, where they had quite a number of the large beasts, but it seemed very zoo like, as the animals were all in pens. We were able to get some pretty spectacular shots of them though. We were then led on to the snake enclosures, which I by-passed very fast on my way back to the parking area, trying not to even catch a glimpse, on my way. They would have had a good laugh to see me tap dancing on the roof, if I had. While waiting for the rest of the group to finish, I wandered around the gift shop, trying to see what was on offer, as we experienced our first of many power outages, that I had heard happen so often in South Africa. When we were all together again, we loaded ourselves into 2 jeeps and went on an hour long game drive. It was pretty exciting to see real live African animals and to get up so close to them, but now after having been to Ngala, I tend to think of it as hamburger instead of steak! But, we did see Wildebeast, Bontebok, Impala, Zebra, Giraffe and Bush Buck. We had amazing views over the Valley of 1000 Hills and learned about some of the local plants and their medicinal values. We even managed to do a little shopping at the end, even with the power outage. After a relaxing lunch at their Croctillians Restaurant (no one was willing to take them up on the offer to eat in the croc. pen) we once again loaded into the vehicles and head out to Zinkwazi. Did I mention that they drive on the wrong side of the road there?! There are also a lot of round-abouts, like in England, in the city of Durban. Disconcerting at first, but by the end of the trip I was getting rather use to it. The landscape was nothing like I had imagined. I think I was picturing in my minds eye the old Tarzan movies and rather expecting more jungle, or like you see on National Geographic, lots of Acacia trees and brush. We saw miles and miles and miles of sugar cane! That is their major crop and export, so consequently most of the land has been cleared for the fields. It's very rolling and hilly and kind of reminded me of the foot hill areas of Alberta as far as the terrain went. We could see decent looking housing for the farm labours, that work in the cane fields, every so often, but they were very, very tiny (didn't look much bigger than 1 room) and we were told that each one would house quite a number of men. As we had left Durban we had noticed our first slum. It was almost hidden beside the highway with quite luxurious homes on the hill above. This picture was taken in Soweto but it shows what the slums are like everywhere we saw them. When we turned off the highway to head towards the beach it was more as expected with the trees and brush. After about an hour of driving we pulled in to a very lush Zinkwazi Lagoon Lodge on the Dolphin Coast. Now this looked like the Africa I expected! I was then informed that it had all been planted by the owners over 30 years ago and that not many of the trees or plants were actually native to the area. There was a lot of the same species of trees and plants that I had seen on trips to Hawaii. Even still it was so beautiful and had such an exotic feel to it. We were given 2 Lodges across the path from each other. Each had 3 bedrooms, one with it's own separate bath facilities, a kitchen and living room with a huge deck that over looked the lagoon. Terry was given the room with bath, Carol had her own room and Ev and I again shared, but I decided that I would actually take the couch because of my nocturnal wanderings. I think we were grouped together because we were the 'elders' and Hilda kept the 'young-uns' with her in the lodge across the way. We arrived in time for dinner, which was served up on a large deck surrounded by the jungle vegetation and the wildlife (monkeys) on the roof. We were greeted by Peter and Linda and had our choice from a very extensive menu. By the time we finished it was dark and we wandered back to our lodges, along the path to fall into our beds and anticipate our first real day of work as Volunteers.

Walkway up to the resturant/bar















View over the Lagoon from our room