Day 25 – Durban, South Africa

Today we arrived in Durban. Durban is the third most populous city in South Africa with a population of 4.2 million. It has a humid sub tropical climate with hot wet summers and dry mild winters. Today it reached 29°C.

Sugar refining is one of Durban‘s principal industries. South Africa produces 20 million tons of sugarcane a year and most of it comes from the Durban region (KwaZulu Natal). Durban has a particularly high crime and murder rate even by South African standards. It is also one of the main drug trafficking routes for sub Sahara Africa.

Today we drove an hour north east of Durban to the Hidden Forest Monkey Sanctuary. This 23 hectare, free roaming, forest reserve is home to rescued and re-homed small primates, many of which are very tame and perfectly amenable to being closely observed and photographed. Today we saw a squirrel monkey, some howler monkeys, some capuchin monkeys, a number of ring tailed lemurs and various other small primates, all of which were very cute and sat nicely for photographs (except for the little chap just inside the entrance gate who shouted at us for some minutes and showed us his sharp teeth! Apparently he came from a private home where he had been abused, the poor little soul, 😔 but he seems to be thoroughly spoiled now and has every imaginable luxury available to him.) The sanctuary provides a forever home to its inhabitants, all of which are free roaming. Whilst visitors can take photos freely, physical contact with the animals is strictly forbidden. After a very pleasant hour long trek through the enclosure, we headed back to Durban where, due to the various dire warnings about street crime, we followed the crowd to U-Shaka Marine Village where we had lunch and passed a pleasant enough couple of hours browsing through the tourist shops.