I got up real early, about 5:30, thinking I’d see the sun rise. I sat in the dark for over an hour, forgetting that sunrise wasn’t until 7:00. Tom and I walked around the lake and took photos.

After a great breakfast, we checked out and headed for Zululand. We drove through Ladysmith and got petrol in Dundee, then found the dirt road to Rorke’s Drift. It was a bad road, but we had wrapped our bags in garbage liners again, and eventually arrived at Rorke’s Drift. We gladly paid the R8 fee and went through the museum (we were the only ones there). We took a couple snapshots out in front, looked at the cemetery and decided to head for Ishlandwana. We found a road that was not on the map that appeared to be the route of the retreating troops, and took that. It went to Ishlandwana after some time, and we paid another 8R there. We drove up to the mount, looked around, and that was it. There was a bus load of students leaving as we got there, and we had the battlefield to ourselves. There were many graves marked with piles of stones painted white. There were several monuments to those who gave their lives "for queen and country."

We took dirt roads back to the tarmac at Babanango, then through the forests of eucalyptus and sugar cane, through Melmoth, Empangeni, Eshowe, Mandini and to Stanger. At Stanger, we tried to find a lodge off the N2, but after driving a long way and seeing a sign that it was another 5K, in the dark, with people walking everywhere, we decided to get back on N2 and spend the night in Durban, which we did, at the Balmoral.