iSimangaliso Wetland Park

After the first night in Africa, the weather had a lovely surprise for us: a storm and lots of rain. But as there is no such thing as "bad weather" only wrong clothing and as long it is warm it won't ruin our vacation mode.

 

So we hurried up with the packing of our camping stuff for the next three days, where we headed north with the first stop in St. Lucia (approx 215 km) where the idea was to do a boat tour on the estuary, because we loved it a lot back in 2012. So far the planning.

The drive up there was pretty wet and windy and driving our rental car was a bit of a challenge as it was flying a bit with every gust of wind. You learn to value your Volkswagen in these situations.

But after a bit over 2.5 hrs we reached our first destination and rolled onto the parking lot of the boat tour operator. In the pouring rain.

 

After we learnt, that on this day there was only one boat available for the tour and it had just departed, in addition to the lovely weather, we decided against the boat tour and rather have a game drive through the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.  But before that, we found a hippo dozing in the reed at the shore next to the jetty, absolutely not interested in the humans next to it. What a great first animal experience of this trip, being so closed to one of the most dangerous animals.

We didn't drive straight to the gate of the Wetland Park, we took a tour through St. Lucia first and came across a beautiful boardwalk to the beach, of course it had some warning signs to be aware of crocodiles and hippos, what reminded us of the boardwalk in Canada, where you had to expect bears around every corner. What a thrill!

 

But nobody wanted to have us for lunch and so we had a lovely strol to the beach and a run back to the car, because it started to rain again and the waterproof camera bag was still in the car...

A monkey family was running around on the parking space and we enjoyed watching them for a while, after finally buying a carved monkey apple. We saw a beautiful one six years ago and regretted not buying it the whole time.

 

We decided to squeeze in the check in before entering the park and drove to our hostel with kind of mixed feelings. An affordable hostel, in Africa. What can you expect?

A huge surprise was waiting for us, the hostel was amazing. We had a two persons tent which was located on an upper deck, with several others, and it even had a great view over the pool and palm trees. If you are ever in St. Lucia and no plans to stay elsewhere, try this hostel "Monzi Safari Backpackers". It is clean, the stuff is friendly and it gives you the kind of adventure feeling you are looking for on a safari trip.

 

And off we go to the first game drive. The iSimangaliso Wetland Park, which is declared a UNESCO World Heritage for it's unique Eco-System, is no big five Game Reserve but it has a huge variety of bucks as well as rhinos, hippos, birds and if you are really like you might see a leopard or elephants.

 

We usually share the driving time on roadtrips, but on game drives Kai is the one to drive, you should never drive yourself if you are not experienced at all in how to react to each animals behaviour and can get yourself in mortal danger, if you misinterpret for example an elephants bull body language or just panic.  You can find a lot of bad examples on YouTube and so on...

 

Even with the not so pretty weather conditions we were very very lucky and saw a lot of animals, what you can see in the video above and we also get to see an elephant, which is totally rare in this area, because they usually wander around in the north of the game reserve, where the animals have their retreats and no cars are allowed. But this beautiful elephant bull decided to cross our path, well let's say he was not impressed that we were standing in his way and he made clear he wants us to put the car in reverse and clear the street for him.

 

What a majestical moment and what a beautiful creature.

 

It is not feasible, but maybe it would help if every human being on this planet gets to experience this and sees this animals with his or her own eyes and then being confronted with the fact how endangered this and many other species are. The prognosis says, the rhinos will be extinct in about six years. I can't even fathom that this means, there won't be any more rhinos the next time we'll be there. Gone.  And for what? Traditional Chinese Medicine... what a sick joke.

 

We'll definitely treasure every moment we were able to spent with all these beautiful creatures and where allready looking forward to the next few days in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, the second largest Game Reserve in South Africa. But before that, we needed Dinner.

 

The St. Lucia Ski Board Club was recommended to us so we checked it out. If it had not rained so much, you would have an awesome view over the estuary, but as we chose to travel during rain season, we focused on the Rugby game on the telly.

The food was good, just too much, even for two, the staff was very friendly and we enjoyed our favorite drinks, such as Savanna, an African Cider and Dom Pedro, an desert kinda drink, consisting off ice cream, cream and Khalua.

 

After a good night sleep and a wake up call from a bunch of monkeys we were ready for Hluhluwe-Imfolozi!