Today, we met with our Zulu guide Thulani at the Rorkes Drift Museum. For the 1st 2 hours, he gave us the background leading to the war between the British and the Zulu. Then we drove to Isandlwana to the museum there where we learned about how the battle developed The Zulu use a battle plan called "Horns of the Buffalo" The centre is called the head, the body, and the loins and on either side are the horns of the Buffalo which are composed of those warriors who circle around their enemy. The head attacks full frontal backed by the body with the loins being the veterans of many campaigns. As they attacked, the right and left horns circled around and attacked from either side and at the back. In the battle at Isandlwana they only used the head and the right horn as the British were not prepared to do battle as most of their force was off to the south looking for the Zulu army which had actually been hidden to the north. It was a route. The British soldiers who died were not buried and it wasn't until several months later that anyone dealt with the bodies. By this time, there were just scattered bones which were gathered up close to where they were found, buried and rocks were piled up on top of the bones. So, all over the battlefield, there are little cairns haphazardly placed where the bones were buried. The Rorkes Drift battle occurred because the left horn of Zulu, who had been held in reserve, wanted to taste blood so their leader ran them to Rorkes Drift to kill the soldiers there. The garrison there were forewarned by a couple of survivors of Isandlwana and were able to fortify their area. The Zulu, who had run for 3 hours to get there and who had not eaten for 2 days, fought for 12 hours but finally left after 400 of them were killed. We learned all of this from Thulani who had not slept the night before, having driven through the night from Johannesberg where he had been to his best friends funeral. The temperature today was at least 40c so I am amazed at how well he did telling us about the battles. We are back at the resort now and it has clouded over with a cooling wind. Tomorrow we drive to another game park and will stay there overnight. We have really enjoyed our stay here. It has reminded me very much of the movie "Out of Africa" being able to look out over the veld.