Friday, July 4th, Umkhumbi Lodge, Zululand, South Africa

Greetings!

I know some of you think that Zululand is just some B movie backlot, where black actors in the 1950's starred as tall warriors fighting the British.  It can't really still exist.  I mean, it's South Africa, didn't all that get eliminated when Mandela was released?

If you're like me, and didn't follow very closely, you'll have missed yesterday's whole country (Swaziland), and probably also not understood that South Africa has quite a few complexities.  One of which is that the Zulu people still occupy a significant area in the north eastern part of the country.

We're staying tonight and tomorrow night in three of ten small one-room structures hidden away in a forest in Zululand.  Umkhumbi Lodge is very cozy, and provides us with the perfect location to use as a base for to explore the Hluhluwe/Imfolozi Game Reserve.  It was the Zulu King's private game hunting area, and so became the sanctuary for animals when the general slaughter of anything farmers hated in the apartheid era.

To see all of the photos we took today, click on Friday, July 4th, Umkhumbi Lodge, Zululand, South Africa.  To check out our route tomorrow, click on our Google Engine Map of the itinerary, and find the placemark for July 5th.