St. Lucia: Into the darkness and beyond!

We hopped into a tiny propeller plane at Nelspruit for a one hour ride south to Durban. There we picked up our rental car ready to plot through Durban rush hour traffic and scoff at the people who thought we were mildly insane to drive 3 hours to St. Lucia in the dark. Turns out we were mildly insane. Our 3 hour trip took 5 hours with a couple of detours. One detour to get burgers from a fast food joint (Steers) which is ridiculously good. The second detour was to get unlost. We missed the final turn sign into St. Lucia because we were distracted by the bright lights of KFC and missed the poorly lit road sign. By the way, KFCs are abundant here! We've seen maybe one McDonald's in the entire country. Sorry, tangent.

We finally arrived to the Santa Lucia B&B to the sweetest host Rika and a palatial, well stocked room (meaning they provided excellent sherry wine!). Rika and her husband Francois van der Mewre were a highlight of our time in St. Lucia. They pampered us the way grandparents do, and never let us leave without home baked muffins, allowed us to pack a lunch from their kitchen goodies, provided a cooler with ice, chairs, and towels and so on.

Our first full day in St. Lucia, we took a self drive trip through an ecological reserve and spotted more animals (we're pros now!). Highlights were the Vervet monkeys and their playful babies. These monkeys must be like squirrels to the locals, because nobody stops to look at them except for us Americans.  Unfortunately there appeared to be considerable commercial logging in the area.  As well as historic remnants of logging in the reserve as evident by many stumps amidst the grasses.

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We had a picnic at Cape Vidal's beach and wore swimwear in the middle of South Africa's winter. Before the tide came in, we dipped our feet in the Indian Ocean (first time ever!) and checked out the tidepools.

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The next day we stretched our legs and took a morning walk to another beach where we saw hippos and crocs in the lagoon. In the afternoon, we went on a boat ride - a must do activity in the area. We got very close to the hipppos in the water, and crocodiles lounging nearby. Brian got a few awesome pictures of hippos "yawning"-they're actually posturing. Yikes on those teeth! Best lesson we learned on the boat ride is that St. Lucia Estuary is a World Heritage site because it is the only place in the world that encompasses 5 eco systems.

And that's about it. It was a warm and relaxing couple of days.

N&B

Hungry Hungry Hippos and more...

Comments

[klf]

[das ist gut] Will miss the updates from afar - we've been enjoying them. Have a safe, uneventful trip home!

[Mahroo]

[c’est top]

Hello you two

Enjoying the blog. Noosha where's the picture of you dansing! See you home safe.

Love    Mahroo

[Farhad]

[esto es genial]

 

Dung, monkeys, Noosha doing tribal dances, and more dung...this trip is proving to be an interesting one. 

Noosha, can you please take a photo of you petting a crocodile?

 

[JoAnne]

And the 5 ecosystems are...

Looking forward to those photos!  Thanks for taking time to write all the notes!!  See you soon! 

[nomadicbynature]

Marhoo,  I added a photo of Noosha dancing to the Swaziland post.

[nomadicbynature]

RE 5 ecosystems from Wiki:




Marine System  
Characterised by the warm Indian Ocean, containing the southernmost coral reefs in Africa, as well as sub-marine canyons and long sandy beaches.



Eastern Shores 
A coastal dune system consisting of high linear dunes and sub-tropical forests, grassy plains and wetlands.




Lake System  

Two estuary-linked lakes of St Lucia and Kosi Bay, plus the four large freshwater lakes of Lake Sibhayi, Ngobezeleni, Bhangazi north and Bhangazi south.




Mkhuze and Umfolozi Swamps 

Swamp forests and extensive reeds and papyrus marshes.




Western Shores 

Ancient shoreline terraces and dry savanna woodlands.

[JoAnne]

Brian- just looked it up on Wiki myself.  Thanks for responding :)  Looked up some accommodations as well - beautiful!

[Suzanne]

[ciò è buono] Yay for monkeys! Glad to hear that you are enjoying yourselves and not causing international incidents by dancing with the locals...now why wasn't Brian getting his groove on?

[nomadicbynature]

They TRIED to get Brian to dance, but it obviously didn't happen. :P We just got back today. I am exhausted...maybe slept 3 choppy hours in the past two days. If you're around tomorrow, let's catch up. I can ramble on more about our trip and you can tell me how you've been. Did you get the postcard?

[Suzanne]

[c’est top]

Sweet, you're back! I've got Anna here, the chaperone for the French group (she's British though) until the 13th, when I bring her up to Pasadena to stay with another French teacher for the remainder of the trip.

 

No postcard yet, it's probably still in SA. :) We'll have to get together soon, you'd like Anna...she's cool.