The Dhlinza Forest is a subtropical forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

 or Coastal Scarp Forest in Eshowe, Zululand

Zululand District Municipality

Zululand is one of the 11 district municipalities of KwaZulu-Natal province. The seat of Zululand is Ulundi. The majority of its 804,456 people speak IsiZulu . The district code is DC26...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, one of five natural forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

s running in a 100 km line running northwest from the coast. Others are the Ongoye

Ongoye Forest

Ongoye Forest is also known as Ngoye Forest or Ngoya Forest. It is situated on a granite ridge; inland from the town of Mtunzini in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.-History:...

, Entumeni, Nkandla and Qudeni Forests. They are the most important forests in southern Africa from the aspect of unique biodiversity. It contains rare bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, chameleon

Chameleon

Chameleons are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, their separately mobile and stereoscopic eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, the possession by many of a...

s, snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

s, butterflies

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

, moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

s, frog

Frog

Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...

s and beetle

Beetle

Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...

s. Dhlinza is the home of more than 65 species of birds, including the endangered Spotted Ground Thrush which breeds here, rare Delegorgue's Pigeon, magnificent Purple-crested Turaco

Purple-crested Turaco

The Purple-crested Turaco is a species of bird in the Musophagidae family.It is found in Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe....

 and Narina Trogon

Narina Trogon

The Narina Trogon, Apaloderma narina, is a medium-sized , largely green forest bird in the Trogonidae family, the most widespread and catholic in habitat choice of three Apaloderma trogons...

.

The name Dhlinza is derived from Zulu meaning a gravelike place of meditation after the peaceful setting. Occasional church services are held here and every 3 years a nativity play, written by Selwyn Moberley in 1953, is staged in the forest.

Canopy Boardwalk

First of its kind in Southern Africa, the boardwalk

Canopy walkway

Canopy walkways are bridges between trees in the canopy of a forest; mostly linked up with platforms inside or around the trees. They were originally intended as access to the upper regions of ancient forests for scientists conducting canopy research. Eventually, because they provided only...

 winds through the forest canopy

Canopy (forest)

In biology, the canopy is the aboveground portion of a plant community or crop, formed by plant crowns.For forests, canopy also refers to the upper layer or habitat zone, formed by mature tree crowns and including other biological organisms .Sometimes the term canopy is used to refer to the extent...

and ends up on a tower overlooking the Dlinza Forest. The Boardwalk takes you 125 metres through the forest understory to a 20 metre high viewing platform which emerges above the canopy of trees.