Dundee and Environs

We have been travelling to the west side of the province of KwaZulu-Natal for some time now teaching PEF Workshops in Ladysmith and Dundee.  This massive old tree is at the Lapha Bed and Breakfast where we stay in Dundee.

This is a Grey Heron much like our Great Blue Heron in the States.

In western KwaZulu-Natal in the open grasslands we often see these magnificent birds flying over the fields.  The males tails are so long that they look like a kite in their flight patterns during the breeding season.  The tail slows them down a lot and makes them more susceptible to predation by hawks, hence the name Widow bird.  It should be widower bird though as the female is the one left.  Sometimes the price of vanity is quite high.  The tail feathers are lost after the breeding season.

We took a different route home from Dundee off the freeway and experienced a part of South Africa that is much like Swaziland.  Lots of really rural rondevals.  Click on this and see how many people, goats, and chickens you can find--the cows in the background are too easy.

A view of where the mountains of the eastern part of the province separate the drier western part.  You can see the clouds hanging over the distant mountains.  South Africa is a really beautiful country.

A Southern Bald Ibis.  Very colorful bird but hard to say it is handsome!  They prefer burned or heavily grazed fields.

Aloes with their huge flower stalks.  Again notice the clouds flowing over the mountains.

A typical one-way bridge in rural South Africa.  One must stop and wait for your turn.  This one is over the Tugela River, a river that originally formed one of the boundaries of Zululand.

A mix of the modern, the huge power lines, and the not-so-modern.  There are only foot trails to many houses that are scattered for miles along the route from Pomeroy to Greytown.  Some, it appears, have electricity but most do not and water is collected from spigots located in places where they come and tote it home.

This view is interesting in that it is taken from the road that climbs the mountains of the divide that I have mentioned.  Just about 5 miles from here we were in heavy fog and rain the rest of the way, about 130 miles, home.  Also plantations of pulp forests.  Kind of like going from eastern Oregon over the Cascades into the Willamette Valley.  Notice the large green patch in the middle left  of the picture.  These people live in poverty but the government builds soccer fields like this in the townships.  Often the Chinese government pays for such projects to get favored status with South Africa!

This is out of order as to our trip.  It is near Colenso and is a memorial to British Soldiers killed in the war between the Boers and Great Britain arounf 1902.  It is just along the roadside.

A Sacred Ibis so named because the ancient Egyptians venerated them.  The legend is that at the beginning of spring winged serpents would fly from Arabia toward Egypt and these birds would fly to meet them and kill them at the border thereby protecting the people.

A Southern Bishop taken at the Lapha B&B bird feeder.

A Greater Double-Collared Sunbird also taken at Lapha B&B.  Amazingly beautiful bird.  I wake early in the mornings and on this day was rewarded with seeing some really pretty birds.

We finished our workshops at Ladysmith on this trip but have one more in Dundee.  We are so blessed to work with the people in South Africa.  We will post pictures of our classes next time and wish there were words to describe them.  They are just wonderful and so fun to get to know.