Battlefields

We spent a cold night in Cobham Nature Reserve in the Southern Drakensburgs, then splurged on a night in the Cathedral Peak Hotel which afforded amazing views of the mountains as well as a bath and warm bed for the night. After a sumptuous hotel buffet breakfast we set off on a mission through the Battlefields region to find some old Anglo-Zulu war sites. The landscape is rolling hills of pale yellow grass scorched by the sun interspersed with black fields, scorched by fire. Our first stop was Rorkes Drift (brought to popular notice in the film Zulu) where we stopped for lunch and a tour through the museum. Fugutives Drift where some soldiers retreated from the Battle of Isandlwana with the queens flag is several kilometers down the road inside a game park (?!) and marks the war graves with a commemorative stone. Another 30 odd km up and down winding roads, so dusty that pedestrians walking on the roadside wore grey masks atop their dark skin, we came to Isandlwana which is the site of the battle where the soldiers of the Empire were fairly massacred by the Zulu forces before the survivors retreated to Rorkes Drift and returned the favour. Isandlwana was just closing as we (finally) arrived but you could see the white stones and cairns marking the fallen soldiers from the gate.

Not wanting to brave another cold night at altitude, we hightailed it to uMlalazi Nature reserve on the coast through the timber plantations on a 'tar sealed' 'A' graded road that obviously isnt receiving any World Cup funding. For a solid 25km it featured craters rather than potholes, which Duncan assures me is simply a taste of roads to come. Like Lesotho there seem to be few fences in KwaZulu Natal however unlike Lesotho, the livestock has no herdsman to keep them in line. More than once we rounded a corner of the main highway at 100km to find a large bull standing unconcerned in the middle of the road blinking its big brown eyes at us. Kwazulu Natal also seems to make prodigious use of ripple strips and judder bars to control traffic speeds, which sometimes go on for several kilometers. We're considering driving up the coast and spending a week or so in southern Mozambique before cutting back into South Africa at Kruger. A week in the sun with swimming, snorkelling and seafood is very tempting.