Today’s excursion was a Birding walk in iSimangaliso Wetland Park which is a UNESCO world heritage site. We drove about an hour and a half from the pier to the park. It was quite an interesting drive thru the countryside and the tour guide gave a number of interesting bits of information.
The walk was about 4 kilometers and it was 70% humidity and 82 degrees. We walked in the heat of the day without much shade so it wasn’t very pleasant plus the birds were all hiding! We saw more zebras than bird species. I was dripping sweat by they time we got back to the bus. A couple from Florida said the temperature and humidity was normal for them. I”m not moving to Florida and was happy to be in the air conditioned bus and heading back to the ship. One advantage of traveling without a partner is that I could use both of the air conditioning vents in my row in the bus.
Today one couple was 15 minutes late to the bus- very frustrating since that means that there is less time at the destination. Tours are strongly bound by the time they need to return to the ship.
Here are some interesting facts from the tour guide:
- Richard’s Bay has the largest coal storage facility in the world- it holds 90 million tons! And the export of coal is main use of Richard’s bay
- The top 3 industries are Agriculture, Tourism (internal and external) and Manufacturing (Toyota assembly, clothing)
- Richard’s bay is the fastest growing area for heavy industry (Aluminum processing, fertilizer and paper processing) consequently many children have asthma from the associated pollution
- Their paper processing uses the Eucalyptus tree and they use all of it. The leaves are for medicinal purposes, bark is used for synthetic fiber and the wood is used for pulp.
- Interestingly, the digital age hasn’t reduced the amount of paper being used because the packaging used by all the delivery services requires quite a bit of paper.
- In Richards Bay 1 in 3 adults have the HIV virus. Currently the government offers free medicine for it; much of the cost is/was subsidized by USA foreign aid.
- Land
- Zulu typically do not own land. The king owns the land but Zulu can give the king a fee for a plot of land and then that plot belongs to them and their descendants.
- Since the plot of land isn’t owned by the family, they can’t get a mortgage. Since they can’t get a mortgage they can only improve/build their home if they have cash to pay for any improvements. That’s why there are many partly finished homes in villages.
- Each home includes a separate round house for the spirits of their ancestors. They go to the round house to pray and get advice from their ancestor’s spirits and to conduct traditional ceremonies. Some homes have more than one round house but only one is designated as the ancestor’s spirit house.
- Zulu prefer to bury their dead at home as they believe that the dead spirits provide protection
- Many homes have/use outhouses
