Day 12: St. Lucia and Cape Vidal

At 07:30, S and I began the long drive up to St. Lucia for a boat tour of the estuary. We didn't even have the name of the boat that had been booked for us by the guest house we were going to stay at. Cell phone calls were wonky; I kept getting "User busy". Finally, we got through and found out our boat was the Fannas. The town of St. Lucia is very tourist-oriented, with a gazillion signs pointing to the restaurants, craft shops, etc. and we had to double back to find the dirt road that led down to the pier. The boat operator hadn't heard of us, nor did we have tickets, so we ended up paying and walking on like everyone else. Along the coast of the waterway, there were mangrove trees with their funky roots sticking out. Our captain-guide pointed out several species of eagles and herons, and pointed out some crocodiles that were along the bank. He then manoeuvered us towards a whole group of hippos with their whole bodies mostly underwater.

After lunch in town, we drove up along the coast towards Cape Vidal through the iSimangaliso Wetlands Park. The well-paved roads led us up and down hills through some spectacular scenery and a lot of wildlife as well.

At the beach, we were pleased to find that there weren't too many people, and we enjoyed wading in the ocean, tossed about by the powerful waves. I'm amazed by how salty seawater is; I don't remember the last time I was in the ocean or even at a beach, too long I guess.

We left around 16:30 and retraced our steps back to St. Lucia to get back on the N2 and headed north to Hluhluwe. This took longer than we had anticipated and we arrived as the sun was beginning to set. S had booked us for two nights at the Hluhluwe Guest House. This is a quaint property with a lot of African art decorating the common rooms in the main house, by the pool and in the individual guest rooms. We ate dinner in the dining room, a rather plain, homecooked meal which was a bit of a letdown, given all of the excellent food we enjoyed recently.

Complete set of South Africa pictures in my Flickr set.