Bridgevale Park Traditional Cache
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A short walk in a green belt, close to a bridge that runs across the valley.
It is thought that the first known inhabitants of the Durban area arrived from the north around 100,000 BC, according to carbon dating of rock art found in caves in the Drakensberg. These people were living in the central plains of KwaZulu-Natal until the expansion of Bantu people from the north sometime during the last millennium. Little is known of the history of the first residents, as there is no written history of the area before it was first mentioned by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, who came to the KwaZulu-Natal coast while searching for a route from Europe to India. He landed on the KwaZulu-Natal coast on Christmas in 1497, and thus named the area "Natal", or Christmas in Portuguese.
The modern city of Durban dates from 1824, when a party of 25 men under British Lieutenant F. G. Farewell arrived from the Cape Colony and established a settlement on the northern shore of the Bay of Natal, near today's Farewell Square. Accompanying Farewell was an adventurer named Henry Fynn. Fynn was able to befriend the Zulu King Shaka by helping him to recover from a stab wound he suffered in battle. As a token of Shaka's gratitude, he granted Fynn a "25-mile strip of coast a hundred miles in depth."[citation needed] During a meeting of 35 white residents in Fynn's territory on June 23, 1835, it was decided to build a capital town and name it "d'Urban" after Sir Benjamin d'Urban, then governor of the Cape Colony.
Voortrekkers established the Republic of Natalia in 1838 just north of Durban, and established a capital at Pietermaritzburg. Fierce conflict with the Zulu population led to the evacuation of Durban, and eventually the Afrikaners accepted British annexation in 1844 under military pressure. A British governor was appointed to the region and many settlers emigrated from Europe and the Cape Colony. The British established a sugar cane industry in the 1860s. Farm owners had a difficult time attracting Zulu labourers to work on their plantations, so the British brought thousands of indentured labourers from India on five-year contracts.[citation needed] As a result of the importation of Indian labourers, Durban became the largest Asian community in South Africa.
In 1948, the National Party was elected on a platform of racial segregation laws, which later came to be collectively known by the Afrikaans word apartheid. As a consequence of the Group Areas Act, which classified all areas of the country and city according to race, formerly multi-racial suburbs were either purged of unlawful residents or destroyed. Many Zulu men migrated to Johannesburg to work in gold and diamond mines, and a nominally-independent homeland for Zulus, KwaZulu, was established in 1977 around Zululand. This created tension between the Zulu-dominated, National Party supported Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the anti-apartheid party and supposedly Xhosa-dominated African National Congress (ANC). Terrorism and necklacing continued throughout the province in the 1980s as both parties competed for dominance. Political violence grew exponentially in the early 1990s during the downfall of the apartheid system. Large massacres became frequent on both sides. Fortunately, the successful multi-racial elections in 1994 eased tensions dramatically, particularly after the ANC made the IFP leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, minister of Home Affairs.
Today, Durban is the busiest container port in Africa, the world's 9th busiest port, and a popular tourist destination. The Golden Mile, developed as a welcoming tourist destination in the 1970s, as well as Durban at large, provide ample tourist attractions, particularly for people on holiday from Johannesburg. It lost its international holiday pre-eminence to Cape Town in the 1990s, but remains more popular among domestic tourists.
Taken from (visit link)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Cvcr qernzf?
Orjner gur jbbqra cebgrpgbe !!!!!!
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