Cold

The usual heat of Zululand that is where it is like a hot wet blanket, has vanished. Currently it is quite cold - although cold is really relative! Our minimum temperatures are slightly higher than the cold maximums of Johannesburg. I am so glad that I live where it is not too cold! In fact during the year, we seem to go from spring to summer to opressive heat (swimming pool weather) to a day or so of autumn (Fall to the less civilised of us!) before we swing back into spring. We do not exactly have winter. Strangely enough in November to March, we suffer from "Zululand Snow" the smuts from when the sugar cane is burnt before it is harvested. This is somewhat strange that a ripe crop is burnt before it is harvested, but practically, the fire burns off the rubbish leaves - that would need to be stripped off anyway!

In a Cane trailer, you can fit 14 tonnes of crop, so it makes sense that you only load the sugar cane stalks, and dont need to load 2 - 3 tonnes of rubbish per load!

I am always asked "When is the rainy season at the coast?" but there is practically no rainy season - or winter! If there is a day in the week, it is sure to rain. You cannot plan for a dry season - because there is none! Like Britain, there is a serious drought if it has not rained since last week!

Flying home to Richards Bay from Johannesburg, you can see from the plane when we cross into Natal - because the countryside changes from the brown of the highveld, to the green of Natal coasdtal. The word "veld" is afrikaans for "bush" or "countryside" - kind of like I imagine the savannah of Africa normally looks. I grew up in what became known as Zimbabwe, that is kind of a tropical highveld, since the Tropic of Capricorn runs through Southern Africa north of Johannesburg and near Polekwane (used to be Pietersberg) and Zimbabwe is closer to the equator than this tropic.

Generally Natal is green, Gauteng (old Transvaal) is brown (and grey concrete), the Cape tends to be blue and my favourite is the old Eastern Transvaal - where the famed Kruger National Park is, which reminds me of the colour lilac or even purple! Even in KZN, you drive to Durban in the green coastal area (mainly sugar cane farms) and you can tell when you get neat Durban - there is a pall of dirty air that is visible for a long way! Even driving up to Johannesburg, you can see the pall of smoke around Johannesburg! When you drive home from Gauteng, you feel the opressive air from a big city clearing. I hate the traffic in Johannesburg - rush hour jams of 35 - 45 kilometers, 4 lanes one way - compared to the traffic that goes past my home - heavy if there are more than 2 cars A DAY!