South Africa – Saint Lucia last day

It’s Friday march the 3th 3:30 a.m., when they – from Monzi Safaris - picked us up with a special safari car, a Toyota Landcruiser, for a tour to the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park. This park is situated approx. 60 km from St. Lucia and it’s the oldest proclaimed park in Africa (1895).

Because of the hilly country it was difficult to spot the animals. So we make a game of it, the first who sees an animal gets bonus points. Hardly started in the park, we saw our first animal of the big five: a giraffe. “Bonus”! It was a very nice tour – very rough terrain - but we didn’t see so many animals this time like in Kruger National Park. We’ve seen a lot of giraffes, wild beasts, impala’s, white rhino’s, elephants, zebras, and warthogs. Unfortunately we didn’t see lions or cheetahs. The tour was well-thought out including breakfast and a scrumptious lunch at nice picnic sites, where the guides prepare beef steaks and sausages on a “braai” (bbq), served with rolls and salads and a lot of cold drinks.

Late in the afternoon we drove back to St. Lucia. There we went to our “new” lodge, named “Flamingo”.  I have to admit that the room was much better (greater and cleaner) than the one last night at “ Jo-a-lize lodge”. But we did have a sudden “shower” at midnight from the airco, it leaked a little bit right on klaas’ head ;-)

Time to go into the direction of Durban, 260 km away from St. Lucia. Durban is a city with almost 600.000 inhabitants, among which a large population of Indian people. The harbour is one of the greatest natural harbours of the world. Here we stayed one night at “The Grand Orchid Guesthouse”, which was really proper and modern, owned by a very kind and gentle Indian lady in a luxury neighbourhood. Here we spent a half day in a shopping centre “Gateway Theatre of Shopping’, before we pursued our journey to Margate 150 km further.