Dundee & Talana Museum

Our drive from Clarens to our next stop - Dundee - included zooming past the dawdling Mercedes and seeing our first baboons.  Baboons are a riot to watch - unless it’s our car they’re systematically destroying (imagine delinquent teenagers left unsupervised in auto shop).  Again, unfortunately, there was no place to pull over and get a picture.  I’m sure we’ll see many more.

Dundee is in KwaZulu Natal - the site of many conflicts between the British, Voortrekkers (Dutch settlers), and Zulus.  It was also a significant coal mining area from the mid-19th century until the late 20th century.  

We spent the day at the excellent Talana Museum  just outside of town.


The museum included exhibits explaining the region’s archeological past, the realities of the underground coal mines (horrifying), famous battles of the region (I’m still not entirely clear about who was fighting whom for what reason), and life in the early days of Dundee.





In addition to the exhibits, the grounds are ablaze with flowers  -


And John found lots of big equipment to admire -










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the road again 🎵

Image
On Monday morning we had breakfast with the two other couples that were staying at the B&B - both happened to be from Germany, but they weren’t traveling together.  We had gotten to know them last night when we all opted to have dinner at the B&B, as well. After breakfast we packed up and hit the road again, this time heading for the town of Robertson (where we’ve never been before) by way of two familiar stops. The first was lunch at Diesel & Creme - a fun spot in the small town of Barrydale that we discovered on our first trip to South Africa five years ago. It’s a popular lunch place with good food and a delightful array of old diesel pumps, signs, etc. Our next stop isn’t what it looks like... “Ronnie’s Sex Shop” is a famous roadside attraction that’s 1) NOT a porn shop, and 2) the result of a practical joke.  Ronnie bought the derelict building with plans to restore it and open a roadside fruit and vegetable stand (there’s a lot of produce grown in this area)....
Read more

Road trip to Franschhoek

Image
Today we took a road trip over a mountain to Franschhoek, the St. Helena of South Africa’s winelands region. It was a beautiful day for a drive, and traffic wasn’t bad at all, although downtown Franschhoek was reasonably busy, all things considered. We had lunch in a pub in the restored train station. And we found three of the Big Five wild critters - and they held very still for us. 😉 A Cape buffalo - An elephant (a bit smaller than those we’ve seen in the wild on previous trips - must be a baby) - And a rhino - After lunch we continued our drive through the mountains on the far side of Franschhoek, pulling over several times to take in the views. And we came across more baboons.  These aren’t great photos since they were in the shade. These two looked like teddy bears - right after I took the picture, one shoved the other over. This big guy sat on a rock and looked at me. We continued over the pass and came down into a valley with miles of apple orchards where the ripe fruit was...
Read more

Time to go home

Image
Wednesday morning we enjoyed our last breakfast with this view - We finished packing up our bags, but this one didn’t need repacking - The duffle filled with John’s motorcycle gear never got opened (but it did get schlepped in and out of a lot of hotel rooms).   Our drive to the Cape Town airport was easy, as was returning the rental car.  I wish every airport would paint “Rental Car Return” on the correct lane repeatedly and well ahead of time - well done, CPT! We had a porter help us get our bags from the rental car return area to the departure area, which was money well spent - it was like having a personal guide through the crowded airport.  He checked his phone to see which specific British Airways line we should be in and delivered us right there. The airport was crowded - the departing flights were full, and lots of people were there trying to get a seat on any possible flight before tomorrow’s country-wide lockdown, which was just announced two days ago.  It ...
Read more