Saturday Notes and Pictures!

Today the first thing I did was take a morning picture of the Indian Ocean. Of course it's of the ocean, since that is just about all I can see out the windows!!!



After coffee we went for a walk on the beach. We walked north, from the apartment along the Promenade, about a mile. It is a wide brick paved pathway above the beach, with a few stores and restaurants, but mostly a nice smooth path to watch the surf from. The surf is up; the weather is calling for unusually high/rough seas all along the coast.
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The north end the Promenade ends at a nature reserve called Hawaan Forrest Umhlanga Lagoon, which is a narrow footpath over the hills, through the trees and underbrush and foot bridge over a lagoon. I got an interesting photo of an egret on the edge of the lagoon and the beach and ocean behind it.

We don’t have that in Chicago!!! We wandered around the lagoon and on the beach all the way back.
We went to the village, local city center, for lunch and then a turn around the local shopping area. A bunch of open air malls, and one enclosed mall, but nothing like we call a mall.

On the way back to the apartment, we found a troop of monkeys. They are obviously not afraid of us… They did not run, but didn’t get any closer than about 6 feet. They are the Vervet monkey, weigh about 17 to 26 pounds, we saw about 6 or 7 adults and about 12 youngsters. They were so cute running and playing, reminded me of kittens. I got a couple of good monkey portraits!!! My first wild animals in Africa.

Tomorrow we are going up to Phezulu Park, just a bit under an hour away. It will be my first venture out of Kwazulu Natal since arriving.