St. Lucia
Trip Start
Nov 02, 2005
1
10
48
Trip End
Nov 01, 2006
St. Lucia,
South Africa
Monday, December 19, 2005
Thanks for staying interested in our website. We're having too much fun it would seem and can't seem to find the time to keep this thing updated!
We made our way from Buenos Aires to Johannesburg without any difficulty. We got picked up at the airport and taken to our hostel, which had a nice backyard and a pool. Thanks to Malaysian Airlines, Dave stayed up all night playing video games in his seat, and we were both pretty tired from the jetlag. This was a nice place to relax.
While in Jo'burg, we checked out the Apartheid museum. This place really blows your mind. It's very informative, and very real. You really can't spend much more than a few hours there as it does get pretty heavy. We managed to clear our head a bit by going across the road to Gold Reef City. This is a theme park with all sorts of rides and roller coasters.
We then headed directly for the coast in order to apply for our visa to India in Durban. Durban has the highest population of Indians outside of India, has an Indian Consulate, and has great Indian food as well! We didn't get up to much aside from putting our visa in and heading north for some wildlife viewing.
St. Lucia is a town situated in the St. Lucia wetland reserve. There's plenty of hippos, crocodiles, as well as the occaisional zebra or wildebeast. But getting there was the most fun. We got into a minibus taxi (a large van) in Durban, along with 14 other passengers and sweated our way out to St. Lucia. The driver was cautious and careful, and the other passengers were very courteous (albeit sweaty).
The hostel we stayed at was amazing.
StLucia01
It had a rock pool, excellent bar, free Braai everynight (South African bbq), and all sorts of free shuttles to the surrounding area. We managed to soak up some sun at the beach, enjoy the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, and eat plenty of seafood.And then there's Hluhluwe. Hluhluwe is a game reserve not too far from St. Lucia. We chose to do a half-day drive through the park to see what we could see. Within seconds our guide spotted an elephant 3km away. Dave still thinks they painted a big poster of an elephant up on the hill to impress the tourists. But then just a little further we came upon some white rhinos. We weren't even that close, but we certainly didn't want to be any closer. They look like tanks, only sharper.
The rest of the morning gave us some great views of giraffes, buffalo, wildebeast, warthog, impala, nyala, springbok, grey monkeys, hyena, and many more but it's hard to remember. It was a fantastic day.
We took a short walk from our hostel (which has warning signs about hippos wandering through the backyard at night) to the mouth of the estuary. Here is where all the hippos hang out and later in the day they get a bit more active; jumping out of the water and opening their gigantic mouths. Walking along the estuary was kind of freaky on its own. There are warning signs every 50 feet and you have to keep your eyes peeled for any hippos or crocs. We managed to see a bunch of both that day. Very cool.
While in St. Lucia, we got to experience our first christmas ever where it wasn't cold! It really didn't feel like christmas being so far from our families.
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Also, there wasn't the crazy amount of decorations like back home either. The hostel put a warthog on the spit braai and served up a fantastic South African christmas dinner to all the guests at the hostel. We actually planned to leave before christmas, but someone from a neighbouring hostel offered to take a bunch of us on another safari if we paid for the gas. For CDN$20 each, we spent 14 hours on the road visiting two other game reserves. Tembe, known for its elephants, and another further up the coast from St. Lucia. The latter had a whole lot of sand, and not much else to see. Our buddy did manage to get us lost, but fortunately he spoke Zulu and got directions from one of the locals. It was really interesting to drive through a Zulu village and see how they live.
Tembe was the first park we went to that day. Within 10 minutes of entering the park we found ourselves in the middle of 4 or 5 elephants. At least one of them was a bull. We knew this because of his giant, flapping ... ears. It was huge... sorry, THEY were huge...
ahem... moving on.
In Tembe they have built hides near the watering holes. This was amazing. You can park your car, walk down a gated walkway in order to keep quiet, then view the watering hole from an elevated hide. As soon as we walked into the hide, our jaws dropped. There was at least 15 - 20 elephants, as well as Nyala and warthog. After quietly taking pictures and soaking this whole scene in, one of the elephants wandered over to the hide and began eating the tree directly below us. It was incredible. He tore it up like it was a toothpick.
All in all we ended up staying a week in St. Lucia. The town is great for wildlife, relaxing, partying, seafood, and meeting great people. We really wished we could have stayed longer.
