February 3rd, 2010
Posted in I arrived late afternoon, yesterday. Today at 3 I have a photoshoot, so I didn’t want to spend the night somewhere else. I’d left Durban early, because I didn’t want to go back by the same route, and took the old road. I’m so glad I did, because I saw some weird and wonderful things along the way. Like these magical Makaranga trees near a town called Kloof:
Enchanted trees in a magical forest
And then, this gated community at Hilldene. I haven’t told you about gated communities yet. They call them estates, or townhouses. In effect, it’s a whole bunch of houses enclosed by a wall, with guards, and dogs, and barbed wire (actually not barbed wire, but razor wire, a South African invention, as I was told proudly by a security guard).
Plantations estate
They’re like very luxurious concentration camps. The architecture is often quite oddly at contrast with what you’d expect in Africa.
Weird medieval-looking castles behind razor wire
At a place called Inchanga there is an old railway station where they still have working steam trains, so that tourists can go for a little tour through the countryside in them. They’re beautiful!
I was amazed to hear that steam trains had still been in use until recently.
Steam locomotive
That was the end of the old road though, I had to take the highway from there and carry on to Jozi with no more scenic stops.
And now I’m going to hit the shopping malls 
Tags: inchanga, kloof, makaranga, razor wire, steam train
