Swaziland and St. Lucia
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2007
1
9
16
Trip End
Jul 31, 2007
St. Lucia, South Africa
Monday, July 23, 2007
After that, we spent a little while at a market, and then hit the road again towards St. Lucia, about another 4-5 hours away. The place that we had booked for the weekend was deserted, apparently closed down, so we found another hostel just down the street to stay at. Turned out really well, as it was a really cool place.
We hit the beach on Saturday, had a really nice walk and then swam for a bit. First time in the Indian Ocean for me, and it was really nice and warm even though it's still winter here. The waves were pretty huge, so we didn't stay in for long. The beach ended up taking most of the day, and then we came back to the hostel for their traditional Zulu dance and dinner. The free dance was easily 10 times better than the Swazi one - the guys were really into it and they had some pretty cool beats too. Dinner was alright, and all in all it was a great night hanging out at the bar.
Sunday morning was an early one, as we had kayaking booked at 7 am. We woke up to rain, but it cleared up perfectly by the time we were out on the water. St. Lucia is a world heritage site, and it's a semi-saline wetland that opens into the Indian Ocean. We kayaked for about 20 minutes, and saw a group of hippos right next to the edge of the water. Our guide somehow managed to convince us to get out of our kayaks about 100 m away and walk closer to them. Keep in mind that hippos are actually the most dangerous animals in Africa. We trusted the guide anyway, and got some pretty good close-up views. Also got pretty close to a massive crocodile that he said was 50-60 years old, and then saw a lone hippo in the water. He went under water, and our guide suddenly said "Ok we have to get out of here really fast." You can imagine that we paddled pretty hard, and no damage done.
We were back at the hostel in time for a quick bite of lunch down the street, and then we all drove out to Cape Vidal, a bit north of St. Lucia in a game reserve. The beach there was pretty nice as well, and we stopped at a couple of other places to look around. Also did a loop drive and saw a hippo grazing, a rhino right next to the road, some baboons chasing each other, and a bunch of antelope. We went out for dinner for Phalalo's birthday (I had some pretty tasty crocodile), and had a slightly calmer night than Saturday afterwards at the hostel. A couple of us were at the hostel bar when Margaret came in and said she had just seen a hippo across the street. 99% of the time, you'd laugh and stay at the bar, but not in St. Lucia. We jumped into the Benz and drove across the street, shining the headlights into a vacant lot so we could see. We watched him eating for about 15 minutes, and he hardly noticed us. Definitely a cool thing to see a hippo walking around in the middle of town! This morning Michael and Rachel (who were camping at our hostel) told us that they had heard the hippo walking around at about 5 am!
Today was a pretty long day of driving all the way from St. Lucia to Klipkop - about 7 hours. It wasn't too bad, since we suddenly have a lot of drivers. Sinead and I split the driving in the Datsun, which was really lucky since we got pulled over at a police checkstop while I was driving. Sinead didn't have her license on her, but thankfully I did...not really sure how the Uno and Datsun passed the police walkaround though. List of things wrong with the Uno: you have to hold the window when you roll it up or it falls out, the passenger door no longer opens from the inside, there's a couple of holes in the floor, the hand brake doesn't work, and the passenger chair doesn't stay anchored in the floor properly. I still love that car though, even with its 466000 kms.
Hard to believe that I'm leaving in 6 days, and only 3 more days of volunteering!
