KwaZulu-Natal Province
A brief history.
waZulu-Natal was previously known only as Natal. The Portuguese explorer, Vaso Da Gama, who landed in its natural harbour on Christmas day, 1497, named it "Christmas".
Over the last 500 years or so, this coast has seen the likes of pirates, shipwrecks, treasure-seekers and those wanting to escape from the British Empire. One of these groups who fled the Cape of Goodhope were the Afrikaans "boere" (farmers) who trekked up the coast. The Afrikaans word "trek" thus found its way into the English language from this 1832 event of mass migrations away from the Cape of Good Hope.
The Midlands of Kwa-Zulu Natal became the battleground between the Afrikaans "trekkers" and the Zulus, between the British and the Afrikaners and between the Zulus and the British from the 1830s onwards. In 1899 the South African War 
(or the Anglo-Boer War) broke out, one of the major battle sites being the Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands area. The Afrikaans "Boers" had however learnt guerilla warfare from their contact with the Zulus and the British Empire suffered many defeats against the Zulus and the Boers. The modern warfare tactics of digging trenches (as used in World War I) and guerilla warfare were first practiced here.
Another mass migration of people during colonial happened times were the Indian slaves who were immported by the Bitish Empire in the nineteenth century to work the sugar cane plantations of the north coast area. The Indian influence on the country has been so powerful that many today consider a plate of curry and rice to be typical South African!
Climate & landscape.
Most of the coastal area from the south coast all the way to Mozambique has a very pleasant sub-tropical climate and the warm Mozambique current flowing south past the coasts of KwaZulu-Natal means that there is swimming all year round.
KwaZulu-Natal is the one province that has it all, from gently undulating savannahs that characterise the African midlatitudes, to the sub-tropical coastal shelf of the north and south coasts, from the imposing Drakensberg to the Midlands' Valley of a Thousand Hills, you get everything in one place.
The province that brought us the mighty Zulu King Shaka that captured everybody's imagination for over a hundred years, is the home of the Zulu nation, the descendants of the 1820 British Settlers as well as over five million Indians, who brought with them their exquisite cuisine.
The south coast also has the world-famous Aliwal Shoal, breeding ground of the Ragged Tooth Sharks and, to the north, the St Lucia Marine Sanctuary that was last year declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations.
KwaZulu-Natal therefore has everything: mountain climbing in the world's oldest mountain range, the Drakensberg (that is thought to have been the first land to rise from the primordian seas some four billion years ago); snorkling in the tepid sub-tropical waters of Sodwana Bay; sunbathing on the south coast beaches; diving with the sharks at Aliwal Shoal; fly fishing in the Midlands; riding on the Banana Express in Richard's Bay; or taking in the eco systems of the mangrove swamps with its unique creatures or of St Lucia, or watch the bottlenose dolphins surfing the waves all year round along the Dolphin Coast.
