We had a lovely fish & chip lunch over looking the ocean and visited the Umhlanga Lagoon National Park where you can go for a 2km walk through the bushes and there's a broadwalk across the lagoon. We came across the rare grey duiker - which is the smallest buck of 1/2 meter in height, it was really cute and we just stopped and watched it for about 10 minutes and it wasn't bothered by us at all. We also came across baboons which was a little scary as they can be quite vicious and the longer we stood and watched them, more appeared out of nowhere. There are warnings to go with a guide for protection (or maybe that was due to the locals and not the animals :)
We went to the Gateway Shopping Centre which is quite well known for their outdoor artificial surf, where you request the speed of the water and you can do tricks on this make shift wave, pretty cool to watch.
Next day was a long drive - we now know to take the toll roads as the "alternative" route takes ages. We stopped off at Eshowe in Zulu-land and did a tour around the museum that is based in a British Fort our guide was really informative and showed us around, we saw old weapons, hand made baskets and huts. There was also an interesting fly trap which was used during the plague. We discovered that even today there is a Zulu king but he has no political power and an interesting fact was that in the late 1800's there was a white Zulu king who had 48 wives and 117 children! Was he lucky??
Finally arriving in St Lucia just before dark - this is a really small town consisting mainly of one road with all the shops and tourist offices on it. We drank in the evening at the ski-boat club to watch the sunset, this place is on the banks of the estuary where we watched the kingfishers, crocs and hippos just off the banks. Really amazing to just sit there and be at one with nature.
A bit of background on St Lucia - It is one of 7 World Heritage Sites in SA (of which we visited 5). This place is special because of it contains 5 different ecological environments - coral reef, sand dunes, wetlands, wooded forest, and savanna. This means wildlife is in abundance and is very diverse.
Next morning we were off for a day at Cape Vidal which is located in the National Park and as we drove though we saw buffalo, buck and zebra. We just chilled on the beach and did some snorkelling, what a beautiful day. We also stopped by Mission Rocks where the waves crashed against the rocks and we watched Kites soaring, looking for their dinner.
On the way back to town we took the detour on the offroad track and saw some wildlife only to find that once we got back onto the main road there was more out here close to the tar road!! ;)
We took a night safari with our host on his Shaka Barker tours that he runs in this massive 4x4 that takes up 2/3 of the road! This is quite a difficult tour as the only way to spot animals is by the glare from their eyes from the spot light, there was a 50% chance of seeing leopard on this tour, but unfortnately we found tracks that we couldn't follow :(
The first spot of the day was pretty amazing as he stopped the truck on the side of the road, within minutes of passing through the gates and came back carrying a small cameleon - how he saw this small creature from the truck whilst driving was unbelievable (apparently they glow and reflect light)
Next was a wildebeast that hangs out on his own - the story goes that he is confident that if he stays round his area he'll find a mate so he didn't migrate with the rest of his herd - he's been in this area for 4 years and still hasn't realised that there are no females ;) We didn't see much else that we hadn't seen already, although he did spot some green pigeons and an owl with freshly caught prey.
Half way through our tour we stopped off and had some hot chocolate to get us warmed up, this was a bit scary and only half the group actually got out of the truck!
Next morning we went to the Seaview beach and we couldn't have asked for better weather as it was lovely and sunny. We had real good fun as we managed to get free boggie boards and did some boggie board surfing for most of the day. We really had to hang onto the boards as some of the waves were really strong and if they caught you wrong you tumbled for quite a bit. See below for Marc in action...
We finished off our lovely couple of day in St Lucia by having some more drinks at the ski-boat club to a lovely sunset.
http://www.shakabarker.co.za/
No comments:
Post a Comment