Who put the trash out? Who cares!

Story first published op-ed page, Sunday Tribune, Durban, South Africa, on August 29, 2010

It’s Sunday morning at North Beach in Durban. The sun is shining. Somewhere the sardines are still running. The new, improved beachfront promenade is alive with foot traffic. People cycling, strolling, jogging, walking their dogs, walking their kids. The surfers are out; the fishermen are complaining to anyone who’ll listen about their ban from the piers; the skateboarders and BMX-ers are shooting the ramps at their graffitied concrete park …

South Africa has it all. But — what is this?

There’s surf, sunshine, scenery, wildlife — adventure. And when you get tired of the tourist scene, there’s Buddha, dharma and …

Every year is Year of the Tiger at South Africa’s Tiger Canyons

Story by Daryl Balfour
Guest Contributor
Photos by Daryl and Sharna Balfour

I spent two hours in a tiger’s den this week, watching her nurse five hours-old newborn cubs — including the first white cub born in the wild in more than 50 years.

Tembe has Africa’s biggest tusker and web-spinning spider plus tiny suni

By guest Africa correspondent Graham Linscott

Photos by Wayne Matthews

TEMBE Elephant Park, a wilderness in the remote north-east of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, offers visitors the opportunity to step back 200 years into unspoiled pre-colonial Africa.

It also offers the opportunity to spot southern Africa’s largest tusker, a giant bull elephant named Isilo who is about 65 years old …

Alive in South Africa: When an expat goes ‘home’

What is it like to return to your roots, your soil, for the first time after you’ve emigrated and made …

Are you a culinary traveler? — 22 clues

You know you’re a culinary traveler when:
Whether it’s a day trip, a weekend escape or a round-the-world vacation, what you …

Butterfly effect links Buddhist groups in South Africa and San Francisco

Story and photos by Wanda Hennig
First published in the Sunday Tribune, South Africa
The Ufafa district, near Ixopo in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is home to around 23,000 people. Families reside in a sprawling muddle of family compounds that stagger up hills and tumble into valleys, forming a jumbled patchwork of mud, thatch, concrete block and tin. The dwellings have no electricity. Water for drinking, washing, cooking and bathing is hand-pumped from underground wells and carried in plastic bucket and barrels. The area could have been forgotten. But — was it serendipity, karma or …

William Kentridge: Five Themes in San Francisco

South African artists opens at SFMOMA with huge traveling show.
By Wanda Hennig for Sunday Tribune, South Africa
San Francisco Street photos …

South Africa turns up the volume in Salt Lake City

First you heard the ululations and the shrill whistle blasts. Then you saw the flags. A big one swirling above the heads of the multinational throng crowding the cavernous lobby area of the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, USA. And many smaller flags waving and dancing with their bearers.

Several in the party, which numbered around 35 at a quick count, were uniformed — if a collection of crazy head-consuming jester hats adorned with South African flag emblems and bells qualify as a uniform. A core group, it seemed, was there, to make noise. The less raucous were … Read more