St. Lucia: South Africa

After our days of hiking in the Drakensburg, we made our way south and east through Durban to St Lucia. We contemplated stopping in Durban for lunch but in the end decided we would rather spend the time in St Lucia. St Lucia is on the ‘Elephant Coast’ and is part of an enormous wetland park. We camped while there, and spent the afternoon just up the coast in Cape Vidal, which is known for nice snorkeling and great whale watching, along with a great drive through a game reserve to get there. We partook of the whale watching since it was the perfect time of year – humpback whale migrate south from Mozambique with their babies. They were a good ways off shore but we saw 50 or more humpbacks breaching and blowing, a fantastic sight.

campsite

Ash & I on the beach

hippos

whale breach

We were camping but had seafood dinner in town that night and then checked out the local nightlife, where we met some friendly South Africans. We hadn’t managed to secure any fuel that matched with our camp stoves, so the next morning we wandered over to the neighbors (desperate for coffee) to ask for some hot water and discovered none other than our friends from the previous night! They tried to persuade us to stay another night for a braai, but unfortunately we were off for yet another adventure.

first kudu

Our guidebook stated something along the lines of ‘South Africa has no cohesive national cuisine’ and we found this to be reasonably true. Mostly it was what we would think of as relatively normal food. We had plenty of decent food though for the first two weeks nothing stood out so we often chose to cook for ourselves. ‘Braai’ is South African for ‘BBQ’ and it is truly a national obsession. It’s usually done with charcoal or wood logs (not gas) and we tried our hand a number of times.

The next day we went on our first safari – a kayak safari! Our aim was hippos, crocs, and other wildlife. We saw the hippos from afar and many many interesting birds. The crocs we got to paddle right up close to and hang around to observe. It was pretty neat to be right at the water level and watching life go by.

evil camp monkeys

more hippos

pointing at the croc

open mouthed croc

Drakensberg Hiking: South Africa

After making our escape from Lesotho, we were off to the Drakensburg  Mountains, which form most of the eastern border of Lesotho with South Africa. The Drakensberg is where you go for hiking, and it was spectacular. We were there in the winter, which has a lot of implications, some of which we expected and others we didn’t. We did know the amazing waterfalls would be (mostly) dry and that the startling green in the pictures we’d seen would likely be browner. We had unfortunately forgotten to factor in that the days would be quite short so far south in the winter (about 12 hours of sunlight), and discovered that the South Africans set the whole countryside on fire in the winter. They burn their fields in the countryside and it produces some rather horrendous smoke. All that being said, we had beautiful sunny days (apparently it storms in the afternoons in the summer) and did some great hikes.

view from the cottage

our little barn cottage

Cathkin peak & Champagne Castle

We stayed in a little cottage on a working farm and were happy to have our own space and be able to cook for ourselves. The area was rural but not remote and the smoke produced fantastic sunsets. We did the Blindmans Corner hike from Monks Cowl and the Tugela Falls hike in the Escarpment. It was perfect shorts and tank top weather during the day and quite chilly at night.

sunset

fire on the road

sunrise from the cottage

Drakensberg Escarpment

Steven climbing the ladder

Looking down

on fire

...and some of Steven's gems

goose parade every morning at the cottage

Ash on her way up

pegs