#Wednesday Walk: Exploring Umhlanga - What Can You Expect (Part 2)

This post is for the #wednesdaywalk challenge and the #makemesmile challenge collaboration. This collaboration initially took place once a month, but due to its popularity, @tattoodjay (of the #wednesdaywalk) and @elizacheng (of #makemesmile) decided to make it a weekly thing.

If you want to know more about the rules, visit this week's post by @tattoodjay where you will find all the rules at the bottom of his post after you've enjoyed his beautiful photos from his walk.

This is my second post in this series about Umhlanga. You can read the first post here.

In my previous post, we started at the northern end of Umhlanga where we paid a visit to the Forest Cafe. To get to the Forest Cafe, you have to walk 1km using the boardwalk. This walk takes you through 1 km of beautiful scenery inside the Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve.

Today, we will start moving down south.

We will start from just below the boardwalk, coming back from the Forest Cafe. We will pass the main beach in Umhlanga until we get to the Whalebone Pier.

Leaving the boardwalk, you continue your walk on the promenade just above the beach.

For my first photo, I moved off the promenade, looking out over the beachfront, all the way down to the main beach. From here you can walk on the promenade with the beach just below you to the left. The promenade is just behind the greenery.

A view of the beach right below me.

Following the promenade toward the main beach, you start finding more activities along the way. This is where the main focus is during the holiday season.

Just before entering the "Main Beach" area, looking back north, where we came from.

You then start finding all kinds of restaurants and coffee shops along the way.

A little further down, a more formal restaurant that also gives you access to one of the hotels along the beachfront.

Need some sugar after playing on the beach...? Dinky Donuts might be the answer...lol.

There is definitely no shortage of vendors catering for the holiday market here...

These trees caught my attention with their unique shape... It looks like it also caught the attention of one of the vendors...for a different reason...lol.

This neat little coffee shop serves as a nice pit stop along the way.

This is looking out over the main beach.

And looking down south, you can see that the main beach is right next to the Whalebone Pier.

And remember, although Umhlanga is north of Durban, it still forms part of the Greater Durban Area.

Here is a friendly reminder of that😅.

All along the promenade, you'll find these benches where you can sit down and relax...

...while you enjoy the beautiful view over the ocean.

Let's go have a closer look at the Whalebone Pier.

Walking out on the Whalebone Pier, and then turning around to have a look at the city from this angle.

Some beautiful scenes with rocks just below the pier, looking out over the ocean from the pier.

It is just below those last buildings in the center of the photo below, where you enter the forest via the boardwalk (in my previous post) on your way to the Forest Cafe and you forget that you are anywhere near a city.

Looking down south, you can see the well-known Umhlanga lighthouse.

As I mentioned in my previous post, these photos were taken over several walks at different times.

The following photos are also of the Whalebone Pier, but they were taken during a very early morning walk, catching the sunrise over the ocean at the pier.

The next photo was before the arrival of the new day...

Then, the new day started making its appearance.

And with that, I will end this post. In my next post, on Friday, I will go south, to a smaller beach on the southern end of Umhlanga.

So, see you on Friday, and thank you for reading my post! I do appreciate it!