St. Lucia Rain, Rain, and more Rain!

  St. Lucia, South Africa
Sunday, January 8, 2006

Hi Everyone,

We started to head south out of Swaziland for a 5 hour drive to a town back in South Africa called St. Lucia. The drive had quickly changing scenery from shrub like savanna plains to forested areas with stick like trees, to vast farms of sugar cane. We passed a lot of very poor people living in shacks as well.

We spent over an hour at the Swaziland/South Africa border again. This time was the same as usual, no signs anywhere to tell you where to go or what to do. It was very hot and humid, standing in the line in the heat was exhausting.

St. Lucia is a wetland area. It has 5 distinct ecosystems. The big claim to fame is the crocidiles and hippos here. As well the numerous wetland birds, some of them are huge. Like the Goliath Heron. St. Lucia has a large salt water lake estuary. It runs 60kms in length and is 21kms at its widest point.

You have to be very aware when walking around at night, hippos definately are a problem in rural areas, but they actually come right into the town of St. Lucia as well. We asked what to do if we see one, the reply was "get up the nearest tree you can find" They have weekly attacks in the rural areas, unfortunatley they are almost always fatal.
As well as hippo attacks there are many crocidile incidents as well. Most of the locals here say it is stupid people, everything from letting small children too close to the water, fisherman falling asleep at the edge, and believe it or not idiots who decide it is a good idea to swim in the estuary! They also have the occasional shark come into the lake, there are 3 different kinds of sharks.

Again we have been told that the number one killer overall throughout Africa is not the hippo or crocidile. It is actually the coconut. No I am not joking. More people die every year from a coconut falling on their head than any animal attacks.

There is a cyclone happening in Mozambique and is now just a few hours away from us. So we have been experiencing a ton of rain here. Apparently it is going to get worse as the storm gets closer. So we haven't done much while we have been here. Tonight will be our 4th night here. It is raining all throughout South Africa right now, so we decided there is not much point moving to another place just to sit in the rain. So we have spent a lot of time on the internet catching up the blog. We have walked around the town here, it's quite a nice place to wander, and is even safe to do so at night, crime wise anyways, just have to watch out for the hippos! We have a self catering unit with a full kitchen so we have been enjoying cooking some nice meals. As well we have been watching a bit of t.v. which we have in the room, something we haven't done in over a month. It only gets a few channels, but after no t.v. for so long it is better than nothing.

We did go on a 2 hour boat ride up the lake. Which really looks more like a wide muddy brown river than a lake. We imagine this area looks very much like the wetlands of Florida. The boat ride was excellent. It was a large flat boat with an awning covering it. It held about 50 people. The sides of the lake were lined with reeds, trees, swamp land and sandy areas. You could see large trenches all along the edge where the hippos enter and exit the water.

Our first spotting was a pair of big crocidiles. (also know as flatdogs here) The same crocidiles have been around here so long that the boat captains know a lot of them by name. One of this pair is estimated to be between 60 to 80 years old and is just over 6 metres in length! It was an awesome sight. We got really close in the boat, but were told not to lean out of it at all. There were a couple of people sitting on a wooden observation deck on the shore just feet away from the crocidiles, it is placed high enough up so that they can't jump at you. They can quickly shoot out of the water several meters.



We passed by quite a few pods of hippo in the water as well. The biggest one had over 30. Some had very small babies, they were so cute. The big attraction was to sit and wait to see if any of them would do a big yawn. It's quite the sight to see their huge mouth stretch open. Some of the pods were still sleeping and many were just waking up. It was about 5pm, so being nocturnal it was morning time for them.



We got the opportunity to see the dominant male in one of the pods exit the water. It's unbelievable how big these creatures are. The huge trench where they exit is created just from the weight of their body. The boat captain informed us what would happen as the male exited. The hippo would give us a sign that he was the boss. It was a sight we will remember I'm sure. Sorry this will not be pleasant, but here it goes anyways. He uses his large tail to spray and fling feces everywhere. It flies in every direction for several metres, covering the trees and area to mark his territory. He did this several times.



We also saw many birds. 3 of the largest flying birds. Some of them were storks and cranes. We also saw many South African fish eagles. They look similar to the north american bald eagle, but have more white going down their back. One of the birds, the white egret, is an excellent fisherman. He puts a cricket in front of him in the water and stands perfectly still until a fish comes to eat it. Then he makes his catch.

That's all for now, if we don't have anymore to update about St. Lucia, we will see you at the next stop. Another famous set of parks that have been made into one called Hluhluwe-Imfolozi.