We hunkered down this morning in heavy persistent rain, not feeling inclined to go ashore as planned. We were able to passage plan and with the weather gribs have come up with a plan leaving tomorrow afternoon. The four day trip will be dominated by the need to work around a small clockwise rotating low pressure system that crosses our path on Sunday. There will be no wind but lots of rain in the middle of it so the trick will be to pick up the northerly, north easterly then easterly wind around the outside as it tracks to the north east. Apparently this happens fairly frequently and is known as the “back door” route into Richards Bay.

This afternoon the rain stopped and Colin and Izzi gave us a lift ashore where we met the locals and were shown around the village, school and hospital. We were accompanied by a hoard of young children and some young men who spoke pretty good English. In this and many similar places we have visited on our travels you always meet loads of young children, a few older women at their houses and very few men and really old people. We imagine the men are away working and there just aren’t many very old people in this type of population demographic. It’s difficult to be more descriptive without sounding patronising but these are handsome, bright, engaging people. I am sure (know) they would wish for more prosperity and they wouldn’t comprehend that in the west we are complaining about hard times and a cost of living crisis. We really need to re-evaluate our economic model and value system and create one not based so much upon consumerism and with a more equal distribution of the world’s wealth.