St. Lucia—Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park

Sunday June 5, 2011

St. Lucia

We left Pietermaritzburg on Friday.  Making a stop at the aquarium in Durban on the way.  It turned out to be quite a worthwhile detour with a lot of cool sea life. My photos do little justice to (especially without being allowed to use flash).  The giant sea turtle was the highlight for me.

We arrived in St. Lucia around 6:30pm but it felt very late because it was extremely dark. It was a relatively uneventful drive with the exception of a random guy walking at the side of the road charging into the side of the car and nearly running in front of us. We could not determine what he was attempting to do, but it startled us.

Tuesday June 7

Saturday we all wanted to spend time together, so we agreed on Cape Vidal as our destination.  It’s a lovely beach spot with a drive through a small game park on the way. The drive should take about half an hour, but as every warthog is still such a thrill to me at this point it took us over an hour. The cool thing about some of the smaller game parks is that even though they have much less variety of animals in them you see wildlife more frequently. We saw tons of Impala (herds of nearly 30), Tsessebe, Zebra, Kudu, a Secretary Bird and Red Duiker. The Red Duiker is tiny little deer-like animals, hardly knee high. They are the cutest things, and I keep trying to convince N we should have one as a pet, as a joke of course. The Red Duiker is an endangered species, but we have already seen six of them. On the way home from Cape Vidal, we spotted three white rhinos from far away. We also saw tons of monkeys. I thought they were cute at first, but they kept sneaking up and try to steal our snacks. As Oma puts it, “they are SO naughty!”

I am enjoyed soaking up some sun on the beach.  N and his younger brother spent most of their time snorkeling. Cape Vidal is not a great  spot for it, but N thought it was fun to see all the little fish. I tried it out, but it wasn’t my thing. Even N’s Mom and Oma gave it a try! They’re such good sports! They both really enjoyed it; until his Mom got caught in the current and nearly drowned the following day. Fortunately, N's brother was close-by to rescue her.

N’s Uncle made us delicious Afrikaans food all weekend! As we were eating, a man who worked at one of the other hotels, called us over to the pool to see some HIPPOS! They were about ten meters away from us. Everyone in SA tells you, “There are more people killed by hippos every year than any other animal!” They are massive animals. Apparently they can run up to 45km/hr on dry land.  N’s cousin (who is studying zoology) was also telling us that many people do not know that hippos are not purely herbivores; if provoked, they will eat people. Some of them are extremely aggressive. In St. Lucia, they come up to snack on the lawns. Later that evening through our fence they were even closer, less than five meters. It was quite terrifying.

St. Lucia Boat Tour June 5 2011
Hippo "Cuddle Puddle"

On Sunday, we went on a boat tour to see more hippos. It was a very enjoyable day. They hang out in the water in what my brother-in-law named cuddle puddles. It’s crazy; thirty or more of them all snuggled up together napping with their heads resting on each other’s backs. There were crocodiles in the water too.

Monday we visited the oldest game park in Africa; Hluhluwe-Imfolozi. In this park, you can just drive your own vehicle in yourself. It was a full day event. We got up at 6:00 am and drove two hours to arrive at 8:00 am. We drove all day in the car. You cannot get out because the wildlife are if fact wild and dangerous. We did not leave until the park closed at 6:00pm. Close time is quite strict—people receive quite severe fines for coming out late because there are issues with poachers.

Mornings and evenings are the best hours for viewing game because it’s cool, although it’s winter now, so it was cool all day. I don’t know if I would have survived twelve hours in the car if it had been hot.

I took 750 photos in the park on this one day!  (I’ve edited that down to 75 already and I was thrilled to have got some quite good shots. This is extremely challenging photography for a novice like me; animals move a lot more quickly than people do.

Seeing these majestic creatures up close and wild was quite an exhilarating experience. Sometimes you have to look quite hard to see some of the more species. The most exciting spottings of the day included: 3 Elephants, 4 Giraffes, ~15 Rhinos (including a nursing baby) and Water Buffalo (apparently fairly rare). At one point, we saw seven rhinos in five minutes. It’s often long periods of driving with seeing nothing but then you’ll come across a big clump of animals with lots of different varieties all together.

Everyone had been ready to leave the park at 5:00 pm but N had begged to stay in for just 20 more minutes. I was worn out and wanted just to go home because I didn’t think we’d see anything more. Then, of course, after we have placed wagers that nothing exciting will be spotted we see an elephant right next to the road ten minutes into the drive. Among the more common animals, we also saw: Warthogs, tons of Zebras, Baboons, Wildebeest, Impala, Kudu and Nyala (those last three are all different types of antelope).

Today was a lazy relaxing day. We found a fantastic coffee shop. We wandered down the street, to check out the vendors would give us. I bought a beautiful turquoise and gold scarf for myself that I was absolutely thrilled with this find. Some of our group headed back to Cape Vidal for more snorkeling and sun while the rest of the gang had a relaxing day here at the hotel.

We saw many of the same animals on the drive with the addition of Bushbuck (antelope). I’m getting half decent at identifying the different varieties, which is quite exciting.  And a very miscevious little monkey opened the Tupperware that Oma had packed for us with cookies and stealing a huge armful of biscuits before we noticed him. It was hilarious but also super annoying because then we couldn’t eat anything in the container.

We are about half way through the trip now.  The SA portion is on the home stretch, with only one last stop in Vryheid (where N’s Oma and Opa live) for the weekend. Then N and I will road trip to Botswana with his brother and sister, on Monday. 

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
Running Wildabeast

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
Impala Pair

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
Mother and Colt Zebra

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
Love this Baboon's Hairdo!

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
Giraffe picking its nose with its tongue.  

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
Rhino nursing.

June 6 2011 Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Park
African Elephant