Binocs in one hand, steering wheel in the other
Trip Start
Aug 26, 2007
1
13
Trip End
Sep 28, 2007
St. Lucia, South Africa
Saturday, September 22, 2007
From the Windhoek airport (where it should be noted Steven was welcomed into the exclusive airport lounge, while Cori was barred admittance), we flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, spending a weird and short night at the house of an Algerian immigrant who ran a local B&B. From there, we flew to Richard's Bay, South Africa, on the south-eastern coast of that country, rented a car, and headed north along the coast toward Mozambique, which was our ultimate destination. We had a day to spare, though, and so we toyed with a number of ideas as to how to spend it. We settled on staying over in St. Lucia, South Africa.
It needs to be said that South Africa is, unfortunately, one of our least favorite countries around the globe. While there are a few bright points, like Cape Town, South Africa is, in our minds, characterized by rampant crime, the attendant fear that generates, ridiculously wide disparities in wealth, and, at best, very strained interactions between races that is likely the legacy of decades of apartheid. The country has striven mightily to get beyond that period of its history, but old prejudices and animosities do linger, tainting on a private level the government's public rainbow policy of inclusion, tolerance, and a celebration of diversity. Despite these very significant hurdles, we should also note that South Africa is, by far, Africa's most prosperous and economically successful country: fully one quarter of the entire continent's GDP is generated within a hundred-square mile radius of Johannesburg/ Pretoria, South Africa's economic powerhouse.
For our part, though, we were most affected by reports of crime and its visible effects. Almost everyone in the country has been a victim of a violent crime or knows someone who has been, since armed carjackings occur with alarming regularity - often resulting in the death of the carjacked - house robberies are commonplace, and murders happen every day. As a result, private security systems and services are big business in South Africa. Every house looks like a little compound, surrounded by high walls topped with electric or barbed fencing, and most boast warnings of private security systems or ferocious dogs within. We get the sense that anyone fortunate enough to own a house in a South African city lives a life of scurrying from one safe haven to another, constantly afraid for loss of life or possession. With this in mind, we drove around Richard's Bay (which really is a fine small town, probably much more livable than most South African cities) assiduously aware of locking our car doors, leaving ample space at stoplights between our car and others in front of us, maintaining a vigilance as to what other cars were doing, whether they were behaving erratically, whether their occupants were inspecting us, and so on and so forth.
Not finding anything particularly worthy of keeping us in Richard's Bay, we pressed northward along the coast, covered in commercial groves of verdant eucalyptus. We were struck by the constant contrast in levels of development and wealth; we plied wide, beautifully-paved roads in tandem with shiny BMWs and Volvos, while farm workers in dirty clothes and ratty shoes walked along the highway shoulder for miles to reach small cinder block buildings without running water or electricity.
We decided to explore St. Lucia, about an hour up the road, for the whale watching opportunities it afforded and its proximity to the Greater St. Lucia Wetlands, a UNESCO world heritage site notable for its five interconnected ecosystems: marine, shore, reed and sedge swamps, the St. Lucia Lake, reputed to be the largest estuary in Africa, and the western shores, filled with grasslands and bushveld. As it turns out, we arrived too late in the day for a whale-watching trip, regrettably, but we did have plenty of time to conduct our own self-drive safari within the St. Lucia wildlife preserve, an opportunity we seized enthusiastically.
Self-drive safaris, as it turns out, differ quite markedly from a tour-guide-led safari, most notably in that one has to both steer the car AND look for animals. It proved to be more challenging than we imagined. Nevertheless, we liked the flexibility of driving as slowly as we liked, gazing upon animals for as long as we chose, and never having to fear group censure for erroneously blurting out "I think that's a lion!" when, in fact, the spotted object was nothing more than a tree stump. During our several hours in the park, we saw kudu, rhinos, water buffalo, zebras, oryx, impala, warthogs, monkeys, and a squashed green snake coiled in the middle of the road. And we got out of the car to inspect the estuary and its tattered pier (carefully scanning the area for crocs nearby).
That night, we decided to splurge a little by spending the night at a very luxurious B&B, Umlillo Lodge, decorated in African bush meets Swiss Family Robinson themes and appointed with all manner of modern amenities and touches. For $70, we concluded it was quite a treat and a bit of a deal, as well. And we rounded off the night with a fish dinner at Ocean's Basket, a comfortable restaurant that dished up fresh, heaping servings of calamari, kingklip, and hake. It was a nice end to an unexpected day of good fortune, and it fueled us for the morning's drive to the Mozambiquecan border, where we'd begin our last scheduled portion of our 2007 southern African animal tour.
