Living where I do, I have access to the most beautiful parks set in a World Heritage site very few are fortunate enough to be able to call their own personal playground! My job also affords me access to incredible tour operators who kindly invite me along on various Safaris.
This morning’s excursion was one of those wonderful job-related opportunities. I was collected at 8am by my guide, a stuffed toy leopard, and some German tourists who I would be joining for the day. This particular Safari offered by ShakaBarker is called the St. Lucia World Heritage Tour. This particular tour takes you into the Eastern Shores of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park. It is a full day safari, taking you off-road and affording you opportunities to explore pristine areas of the park normal visitors in their own vehicles cannot access. This includes an ecological overview of the area and the 5 ecosystems that make up this unique park, wonderful game viewing, bird watching, short walks and a visit to Cape Vidal. You get to experience the bush, forest and beach all in one day. You will also be extremely well fed at lunchtime with a full braai and drinks (BBQ for those not familiar with the South African vernacular), snorkelling gear to use at Cape Vidal is also available for those wishing to explore the tidal pools at low tide.
When the game vehicle arrived, the guide jumped out of the car and warmly introduced himself to me as Tony and shook my hand. The presence of a stuffed leopard at the back of the vehicle was rather incongruous considering I was hoping to see the real thing in the park later on. Tony took my rather bemused glance in his stride and informed me it was a stuffed toy leopard that accompanies their tours to scare away the monkeys and prevent them from stealing our lunch. Only in Africa…
When we arrived at the Cape Vidal gate, we were met by a warthog foraging in the grass on the side of the road. A good omen for what proved to be an incredible day. Initially we didn’t see a lot of animals, but this gave Tony time to explain in more detail about what was around us. Ones experience of the bush is always better when you can understand what you see, and Tony’s knowledge gave us wonderful insight into what was growing around us, the smells, the different plants and who eats them. The curry bush – a hardy, evergreen perennial shrub with branched woody stems with aromatic, narrow silver-grey leaves, particularly fascinated me. It bears clusters of small rich yellow button-like flowers in summer and autumn, and after rain, the whole plant smells strongly of curry. It was a rather damp wet morning so the smell of the bush was rather pungent. The leaves are a little bitter, so probably not great for a salad, but the buck like it.
We were rewarded with plenty of zebra, buck and dung beetles. Tony picked up a dung beetle for us to touch. I find it hard to believe that a little beetle this size is the strongest insect. It can pull 1,141 times its own body weight, which is the equivalent of a 70-kilogram person lifting six full double-decker buses. For the birders out there, there is an incredible variety of birds. I was thrilled to be able to see a southern white-faced scope-owl, a fish eagle, and a yellow-billed kite to name only a few of my most exciting sightings.
This park always reminds me of Jurassic Park with its wetland areas, lush green vegetated sand dunes, and plains of lime green grassland dotted with tropical palms. A more grizzly stop among all this verdant green was to look at a skull of a hippo, which Tony explained had died in a fight. I was told it took about 7 hyenas to devour the hippo carcass.
We were fortunate enough to see 2 out of the Big 5 – buffalo as well as black and white rhino. Abundant signs of fresh elephant dropping, but sadly no elephant were sighted on this trip. Tony explained to us the reasoning behind the Big 5 title. These animals were named the Big 5 because they are not only among the most poached animals, most difficult to hunt on foot, but are also the most dangerous.
We then made a pit stop at Mission Rocks for some hot chocolate, and to stretch our legs, enjoy breathtaking views of the Indian Ocean and breaching whales. From there we took a slow drive to Cape Vidal. The trip to Vidal was jam packed with animal and bird sightings, most impressive of which was a herd of kudu, one of the males had a magnificent set of spiraled horns and a Samango monkey. These monkeys are not widespread in South Africa and are our only forest dwelling monkey found mainly in the forests of the St Lucia Estuary.
We arrived at Cape Vidal looking forward to a walk on the beach and a delicious lunch. We must have spent about an hour walking along the pristine beach, which stretches all the way up to Mozambique. While we were enjoying our meander, Tony was hard at work preparing our lunch with lots of naughty monkeys in close attendance hoping to snatch up our meal. This is where Marmalade the Leopard proves her worth, and stands guard saving our meal, and us from greedy monkeys. I find it hard to believe the monkeys are unable to see the leopard as a stuffed toy. It’s unbelievable to see how wary they are of her, and how we were spared the monkey invasion, and the visitors in the surrounding picnic spots were not so lucky! Lunch was a delicious full braai consisting of chicken kebabs, sausage, salad and cooked banana with chocolate for dessert. What more could you ask for!
We then took a slow drive back to St. Lucia via a viewpoint at Catalina Bay, so named after the Catalina RAF sea-plane base, which was created during WWII to patrol for U-boats along the East Coast of South Africa. Here we saw plenty of hippos in the lake. This viewpoint affords you a beautiful view of the Eastern shore of the lake looking across onto the western shores
The St. Lucia World Heritage Tour with ShakaBarker in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park was an incredible experience, and one I would recommend any visitor making the time for. We had a lot of great sightings; our guide was informative, friendly and interested in his subject, which added to the overall great experience. I learned a lot of knew and fascinating information on my safari. As great as a self-drive in the park is, this offers the visitor a much richer, more diverse experience of the park. If you would like to make a booking for this highly recommend safari you can contact ShakaBarker directly at:
http://www.shakabarker.co.za
info@shakabarker.co.za
+27 (35) 590 1162
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