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HowickMar 13, 2008
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To Howick
We departed Golden Gate with a cloudy sky and clouds sitting on the tops of the hills. Several times during the day the clouds became dense fog on our route reducing visibility to near a hundred feet. We traveled through lots of very well cultivated farms and ranches today. The utilization of the land was much nearer optimum than we had seen in previous days. Lots of corn fields, beans, and hay plus other crops.
Todays route was the "scenic" tourist meander route that paralled the toll road. We stopped at several roadside displays crafts and several farm stalls offering crafts and various canned preserves, cheeses, and meat. We drove a couple of km back a gravel road to a "Linen Loft" which was supposed to have a good restaurant. It wasn't operating and the linens weren't really on anyone's Africa souvinier list but it did have a great meat market. We got two large porterhouse steaks for less than 6 dollars.
We stopped for lunch at an Austrian Beer House. It had a great selection of European style meat dishes on the menu. Lots of good food, and inexpensive. Everyone ate so much they opted not to do a cook-out tonight, even tough most had purchased food for it. The cool wind, dropping temps, and light drizzle also helped that decision.
Todays photos include some of the many roadside flowers, photos of "African shacks", and some roadside scenes including ladies cutting the long grasses along the road to get material for the baskets they weave. We saw a strange bird along the road today, but couldn't get a good photo. It's like a red wing blackbird, but the male has tail feathers almost a foot long. It looks almost like it's hovering in the air as the long feathers appear to make flight difficult. Must have something to do with mating as it sure doesn't seem to contribute to flight or function.
Picked up a paper today which detailed some of the damage of the big storm at Durban (tomorrows destination) two nights ago. The damage caused two oil refineries there to stop production for a couple of days. Several major sewage lines broke contaminating the river, and as we had previously heard lots of traffic signals were out gridlocking the city. Apparently a cyclone also hit further north up the coast, but I couldn't tell how far away from the paper's article.
More later
