Eshowe and the Zulu Heartland

Fort Nongqayi Of 1883, A White Turreted Colonial Fort Now Holding A Museum Village With The Zulu Cultural Collections, The Vukani Basketry Museum And The Missionary Chapel And Inside The Same Small Town The Dlinza Coastal Scarp Forest, Crossed By A 125 Metre Aerial Boardwalk That Puts You In The Canopy And Ends At A Twenty Metre Tower Above It · Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal

Fort Nongqayi was built in 1883 for the Zululand Native Police, which is why it has three white turrets and looks faintly ridiculous for a fort, and it now holds a museum village: the Zululand historical collections, the Vukani museum's basketry - one of the best collections of Zulu weaving anywhere - a missionary chapel and a small cluster of buildings around a lawn. That alone would make Eshowe a decent stop. What makes it worth a row is the other thing in this small town: the Dlinza coastal scarp forest, a patch of rare mist-belt forest inside the municipal boundary, crossed by a hundred-and-twenty-five metre aerial boardwalk that puts you in the canopy at bird height and ends at a tower twenty metres above it. A walkway through a treetop is an unusual thing to find in a Zululand town of this size, and it is the reason this row exists rather than the Zulu history it shares with Ulundi.

In the Zululand hills 150 km north of Durban, with the Dlinza forest inside the town, Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

THE FORT NONGQAYI MUSEUM VILLAGE keeps daylight hours most days with a single ticket covering the Zululand historical collections, the Vukani basketry museum and the chapel. THE DLINZA FOREST AERIAL BOARDWALK is reached through its own gate with a separate small fee, keeps daylight hours, and HAS HAD CLOSURE PERIODS FOR MAINTENANCE - a timber structure in a wet forest needs work - so ask before relying on it. SHAKALAND, twenty kilometres away, IS A COMMERCIAL CULTURAL VILLAGE BUILT AS A FILM SET rather than a working homestead, which the row says because the distinction matters. Eshowe has fuel, shops and a few places to stay. Durban is 150 km south, Ulundi 90 km north, and the town is MALARIA-FREE.

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