• South Africa Guide

  • Introduction to South Africa
  • Weather
  • Things Not to Miss
  • Getting Around
  • Entry Requirements

• Explore South Africa

  • Cape Town
  • The Western Cape
  • The Northern Cape
  • The Eastern Cape
  • KwaZulu-Natal
  • Free State
  • Gauteng
  • North West Province
  • Mpumalanga
  • Limpopo

• Cities

  • Cape Town
    
  • Durban
    
  • Johannesburg
    
  • Port Elizabeth
    
  • Pretoria
    

South Africa Guide

KwaZulu-Natal

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa's most African province, has everything the continent is known for – beaches, wildlife, mountains and accessible ethnic culture. South Africans are well acquainted with KwaZulu-Natal's attractions; it's the leading province for domestic tourism, although foreign visitors haven't quite cottoned on to the incredible amount packed into this compact and beautiful region.

Among white South Africans, KwaZulu-Natal is well known for its subtropical coastline, which offers a temperate climate even in the winter, when the Cape can be showered by an icy downpour. This is where you'll find Africa's most developed beaches, in a 250-kilometre ribbon of holiday homes stretching along the shore from the Eastern Cape border in the south to the Tugela River in the north.

At the ribbon's centre lies Durban, the industrial hub of the province and the country's principal harbour. Apart from Cape Town, Durban is the only major city in South Africa that warrants a visit in its own right. British in origin, it has a heady mixture of cultural flavours deriving from its Zulu, Indian and white communities. You'll find palm trees fanning Victorian buildings, African squatters living precariously under truncated flyovers, high-rise offices towering over temples and curry houses, overdeveloped beachfronts, and everywhere an irrepressible fecundity.

Paradoxically, while the coasts immediately on either side of Durban – known as the North and South coasts – are South Africa's busiest and least enticing, north of the Tugela River are some of the most pristine shores in the country. Here, in the Elephant Coast, a patchwork of wetlands, freshwater lakes, wilderness and Zulu villages meets the sea at a virtually seamless stretch of sand that begins at the St Lucia Estuary and slips across the Mozambique border at Kosi Bay. Apart from southern Lake St Lucia, which is fairly developed in a low-key fashion, the Elephant Coast is one of the most isolated regions in the country, though it does reward visitors with South Africa's best snorkelling and scuba diving along the coral reefs off Sodwana Bay.