RICHARDS BAY,

SOUTH AFRICA -

ROOM WITH A STANDARD VIEW!

Friday, March 21, 2025, 6 AM, 75 Degrees, 76% Humidity, W – NNE 12.2 mph

Years ago, we took the family to Disneyworld and stayed at Wilderness Lodge. Our room was identified as “Standard View.” I was excited; we were going to have a room with a view (like in the movie)! We did if you looked in the right direction! If you looked down, immediately below us were the air conditioning units, the trash dumpsters, and the bar-b-que cook shack. But, if you looked up and across the horizon, you could see Cinderella’s Castle and the nightly fireworks! Like the other commercial ports where we’ve moored during the cruise, the view left something to be desired, and there were no Castles or fireworks on our horizon, but it was just for the day, and tomorrow we’ll be next to a Cruise Terminal.

Richards Bay Terminal was the largest export coal terminal in the world, loading 65 million tons every year until Newcastle surpassed it, New South Wales in Australia. Everywhere we looked, there were mountains of ground coal. Watching backhoes move material from the black mountains to the line of trucks waiting to be filled was interesting. Sometimes, their “perch” seemed pretty precarious. The Captain had asked that they clean the pier before we arrived, but there was still a layer of coal dust mud everywhere, and although they were spraying the coal mountains with water to try and keep the dust down, the Port side of the Zuiderdam was covered with black dust. There will be a lot of shipside cleaning going on when we leave this port.

Richards Bay is a natural lagoon and the deepest natural harbor on the African continent. The town was set up as a makeshift harbor by Commodore of the Cape during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. In 1902, the potential of Richards Bay as a new harbor for the eastern shore of Africa was recognized. In 1954, the town was laid out and proclaimed a town in 1969. In 1965, the South African Government decided to build a deep-water port at Richards Bay. Construction began in 1972, and in April 1976, the new deep-water port was opened with a railway and an oil/gas pipeline linking it to Johannesburg. It is a fast-growing industrial city but has maintained its ecological diversity.

We were greeted at the pier by someone riding a motorcycle and waving the South African Flag. Turns out it was the ship’s previous disc jockey & games master of ceremony, a native South African. Team Trivial Pursuit is big on Zuiderdam. Twice-daily tournaments are always well attended. He left the ship when his contract ended a couple of ports ago but he was on hand to welcome his friends from the Zuiderdam. He’ll be back on another HAL ship after his 4-month break. There were limited excursions in Richards Bay, and most of them were multiple-day African safaris with “adventurers” meeting up with the ship later in Cape Town, so we opted to stay at Zuiderdam. The safaris seemed quite pricey (about $7500 per person for 4 days). It just wasn’t worth it to us (there’s always Animal Kingdom at Disneyworld); plus, the flying it involved didn’t appeal (nor did the 4:30 AM flight time). The ship offered a shuttle bus into a shopping center in town (too far to walk), but we’re not recreational shoppers, so we passed on that, too. Some locals set up tables on the pier with things for sale. They just had tables; we saw none of the tent-like covers in other ports. That makes it easy for us to “window shop” from our balcony and decide not to journey down to walk in the coal mud, but it must have been very hot for them by the end of the day.

It sounds like we’re not as curious as some, but there are many excursions scheduled in the Med, and John’s resting up. He is interested in booking a cruise on “The Flying Dutchman,” but he hasn’t found its website. “The Flying Dutchman” is a mythical ghost ship that sails the seas forever, never going into port. The legend supposedly originated in the golden age of Dutch maritime prominence in the 17th century and is closely tied to the Cape of Good Hope, which we will make in a few days. Captain Hendrik van de Decken supposedly made the rash vow to sail during a severe storm until he rounded the Cape. He was cursed to sail forever and never reached his port. “The Flying Dutchman” is the basis of an opera by Richard Wagner and appears in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Actually, there is a “Flying Dutchman” currently sailing around Scotland, but it does go into port.

Although we only saw the commercial port (probably not the most picturesque view of Richard Bay), John did see people camping on one of the area’s beautiful beaches as we sailed it. Richards Bay is not known as a tourist destination other than as a jumping-off port for a trip to adjacent Zululand, a tranquil rural area with abundant wildlife.