Author: Kathryn Costello

I travel. I read. I get up to mischief. I write about what I have been up to.
I also have fun writing down the stories that I told my daughter when she was little about a dolphin named Michaela.
I am a tourism consultant. Owning and managing a successful guesthouse, working for tourism organizations and travelling has given me a lot of insight about what makes a tourism orientated business successful.

Pondoland, Transkei and the tragedy of the SS Mendi.

‘You are going to die, but that is what you came to do… let us die like warriors. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war cries, my brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais [spears] back in the kraals [villages], our voices are left with our bodies.’

What’s in a name? Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa.

Kwa Zulu-Christmas.
That doesn’t sound quite right, does it?
What if the history books wrote about Port Christmas?
Or the Colony of Christmas?

The Umzimvubu River and Port St Johns

…..as usual, the European powers that were, had no respect for local knowledge, so the Umzimvubu River is called the St Johns River on all maps, and in all books written up until the early 1900s.

The Trekbokke of the Karoo

An extermination party shows off their success.

The springbok treks in the late 1800s were akin to swarms of locusts moving over the land, and as devastating to sheep farmers, who often gave up farming after their grazing land had been destroyed by the springbokke.

The Beervlei Dam

It does not supply any towns with water. Considering that this the dry, almost desert like Little Karoo, you will think that strange, or a waste of precious water.

Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, aka HIP

South Africa's oldest game reserve

…a huge black mamba, one of Africa’s most deadly snakes, rose up between them. They froze, and the snake went on its way, but came back when……