iSimangaliso Wetland Park lies well on the main tourist trail around South Africa. It’s a huge park, stretching for 220km along the Indian Ocean coast until the border with Mozambique. It also has a 5 km wide marine component along the whole coastline. I stayed for 3 nights in the town of St. Lucia, which is the tourist capital and main access point to the park.

Because of its size, there are completely different ecosystems to be enjoyed. For the marine part, I had set my eyes on a whale watching tour. But unfortunately it was cancelled due to strong winds. So what I mainly did was drive around by myself. From St. Lucia there are two gates into the park, one to the Eastern Shores and one to the Western. The park is remarkable for South African standards as it is very green. No shortage of rain here, compared to the severe drought much of the rest of the country suffers from.

On my first morning I entered via Bhangazi Gate, which leads you to the Eastern Shores ending at Cape Vidal. For the best part …

The Ngwenya Mines comprise the only entry on the Tentative List of Swaziland, a country without a proper WHS so far. The site has been lingering on that list already since 2008. It claims to be the “oldest mine in the world”. Its iron ore deposits were worked at least 42,000 years ago, when red haematite and specularite (sparkling ores) were extracted by the forefathers of ancient San Bushmen. The mining history of Ngwenya further consists of early iron smelting by the Bantu from 400 AD on and the ‘modern’ mining of the 20th century by foreign companies. I entered Swaziland by rental car from South Africa, crossing the border at Oshoek. The turn-off for the ‘Old Ngwenya Mine’ lies right after the border crossing. It is signposted well. After a few kilometers uphill drive I arrived at the gate to the Malolotja Nature Reserve, of which the former mines now are a part of. A ranger welcomed me, collected the 28 Rand entrance fee and jumped into the passenger seat so we could drive further up to the mine itself. The first view of the mine pit is quite spectacular. Although …

Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape lies at the northern border of South Africa, adjoining Botswana and Zimbabwe. This remote setting probably accounts for its low profile and limited visitor numbers, even among World Heritage Travellers (ranking 830th out of 1052). In the nomination file it was noted that although many WHS have to deal with high numbers of visitors, the sustainability of Mapungubwe is threatened by attracting too few of them.

What I found however was a well-cared-for National Park, worth anyone’s visit for a day or so. On my first two half-day trips into the park, I focused on game drives and brushed up my mammal list total: I saw mongoose, klipspringer, southern giraffe and steenbok for the first time. The park isn’t teeming with wildlife: there are no fences between the park and the adjoining zones in Botswana and Zimbabwe, so the animals migrate a lot between the three countries. Also the density of mopane bushes makes it hard to see smaller animals. But especially the dramatic landscape, with lots of old baobab trees, ridges and canyons makes the park attractive.

Mapungubwe was a large inland settlement that …

My two-week journey around eastern South Africa is going to be one of obscure sites. This is partly inevitable, due to remoteness or lack of tourism features of WHS like Mapungubwe and Vredefort Dome. But my first site of this trip is an obscure one by choice: for ticking off the Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa , there is the easy option of the Sterkfontein Caves (close to Johannesburg). From what I gathered it’s a bit of a zoo, so I opted for one of the other inscribed sets of fossil hominid caves. Fortunately there’s one about half way on the road north between Johannesburg and Mapungubwe: the Makapan Valley. The Makapan Valley was added as an extension to the Sterkfontein area in 2005. It is said to enrich the original nomination, with its long unbroken record of occupation (spanning almost the entire 3.5 million years) and the recovery of fossil fauna alongside. The location (notably the Cave of Hearths) was deemed “as good” in its own right as the Ethiopian Valleys of the Omo and the Awash. The hominid fossils found here are of the Australopithecus africanus and Homo …

Nesvizh until 1939 was the family estate of the most prominent noble family from Belarus: the Radziwill. The WHS consists of a palace with landscape gardens and a church. I visited it right after Mir Castle: it lies just about half an hour away, a bit deeper into the countryside. With only 33 recorded visits on this website, it ranks a very low 442th among 500 European/North American WHS. On the day itself it was also much less crowded than Mir. I started with a quick lunch in Nesvizh town because I wanted to try out the Belarussian specialty ‘machanka’ (something creative with the regional staples of pork and potato – not recommended). On to the palace then, which lies at the end of a very long driveway on the outskirts of town. It has been reconstructed since 2001, was hit by a fire in 2002 but the works seem to be all finished now. You can compare my pictures with those in the other Nesvizh reviews on this website for a ‘before and after’. They obviously are very careful with the interior of the palace, as everybody is …

The last review on this website of Mir Castle dated from 2010. It is however the most prominent tourist attraction of Belarus, receiving 300,000 visitors a year. I went there on a day trip from Minsk, with a car and driver for the day (we also covered nearby Nesvizh on the same tour). Driver Roman was pleasant company, and he made sure that I was given audioguides in English at both locations to learn more about their backgrounds. This approach made the tour considerably less expensive than taking a guide in person with us for the day.

First impression

Mir Castle only lies an hour away from Minsk, and is accessible from the country’s main highway to Brest (we fantasized that we could drive straight ahead, all the way to Amsterdam via Warsaw and Berlin, a drive of at least 1,700km). We arrived at Mir at the opening hour of 10 a.m. The reconstruction of the castle only has been finished since 2013. Entrance costs 10 BYN (New Belarus Ruble), quite expensive at 4.5 EUR: this is far more than the average main course in a restaurant in Minsk. …

I am not going to make a habit out of reviewing former TWHS, but I sincerely thought that the 20th century Minsk architecture still was on the Tentative List of Belarus. However, it was removed from it in 2015. And that while Soviet (or Stalinist) Architecture is not yet represented on the List. Worthwhile other additions in this category could be The Soviet Architecture of Moscow and The Motherland Calls Statue (Volgograd), both featuring in our Top 50 Missing . Anyway, it would not surprise me if Belarus would renominate Minsk in the future. More on that later.

Trade Unions Palace of Culture on Lenin Square

The Architectural ensemble of Francysk Scaryna avenue in Minsk (1940's -1950's) - the full name of the former TWHS - includes the buildings along the city’s 2.9 km long main avenue. It was a harmoniously planned cityscape, constructed in 15 years time after the end of World War II. Minsk had been severely damaged during the war, turning 80% of the houses into rubble. Its architectural design was made by M. Parusnikov, who was selected after a competition.

Today the street has been …

The WH meeting in and around Vilnius provided me with a good opportunity to polish up some reviews of WHS in this corner of the world. Kernavė Archaeological Site had been reviewed for the last time 6 years ago, and – like the Curonian Spit – its distinguishing features always had been a bit of a mystery to me. It is also the least visited site in Lithuania among our subscribed travellers. However, it lies only 45 km from the capital and is open 5 days a week without any restrictions.

Wooden chapel

It is a largely unexcavated archaeological site, harbouring the remains of a settlement and five hill-forts dating from the 12th – 14th century. Kernave slowly had grown into a permanent town at this strategic location near the Neris River from the 1st century on. Its OUV lies mainly in the construction of these hill-forts, as well as the mixture of pre-Christian and Christian traditions (shown for example in the burial rites). The Lithuanians were very late to embrace Christianity: the official year is 1387, ending the existence of the last pagan nation …

During the weekend of 27 & 28 August, the lovely Lithuanian capital of Vilnius was the venue of this year’s WH Travellers meeting. The location provided ample possibilities for sidetrips to the Lithuanian coast (for Curonian Spit), the other Baltic States and Belarus. We were 15 travellers from 8 countries, including for the first time someone that flew in from outside of Europe (Hi Kelly !). There were even spouses present from 2 further countries, plus 3 tiny globetrotters.

A captive audience at the Trakai courtyard

On Saturday we did a customized day tour by minibus, stopping at Trakai TWHS, Kernavé WHS, the geographical centre of Europe at Purnuskes and finally one location of the Struve Geodetic Arc WHS. We had to share Trakai with the tourist masses, but from then on fortunately it got more and more quiet and remote. The visitor experience at Kernavé was a surprise with no less than 2 new museums. One of them is Open Air, and the timber building style of the huts gave us the idea for a new Connection called No Nails . And we were …

The Curonian Spit always has been a bit of an enigma to me. Who were these Curonians? And what is a Spit anyway? The Dutch translation (‘Schoorwal’) did not really help me as it is also a very uncommon word, used primarily to adress the Curonian Spit. So I was happy that we decided to have our WH meeting in Vilnius this year: with a few extra days I could check out this WHS too. I stayed for two nights in Klaipéda, the easiest access point to the Lithuanian part of the Curonian Spit.

The forest almost reaches the beach

Besides its name, another part of the site’s mystery is why it was designated a WHS. It was put forward under 7 natural and cultural criteria. But in the end it was only recognized for one: the efforts, started by the Prussians in the 19th century and continued by the Lithuanian and Russian authorities after WWII, to save this sand dune peninsula from erosion. Constantly moving sand dunes even had made whole villages disappear. Large-scale (re)afforestation was started to keep the sand in place. Forest still is one of …