Tag Archives: St Lucia

isiMangaliso

Lucky me, Jess chose St Lucia village for a three night getaway with good friend Tarryn for her birthday this year. The beautiful isiMangaliso Wetland Park is nearby, and I thought, ‘Great!’

The word mangaliso means ‘miraculous’ or ‘wondrous’ or ‘amazing’ in isiZulu, and it lives up to its billing. The tiny section I explored this time is marked on the map of the greater park in squiggly yellow: from St Lucia estuary to 20km up the Eastern Shores. I’ve been to many corners of this amazing place since my first visit ca.1965.

Birds I was looking for were White-backed Duck and Southern Banded Snake-Eagle (my main targets, I hadn’t seen them in ages); Also Lesser Moorhen; Rufous-bellied Heron; Pygmy Goose; and I saw all of those. Plus, as a bonus, Half-collared Kingfisher and Green Coucal – now Green Malkoha. I stared at these last two thru my lovely Zeiss binocs and by the time I remembered the camera they’d moved off. I’m still mainly a binocular person, not a photographer! Gazing in awesome wonder rather than recording.

The Samsung phone feature pic is on the vlei loop road, looking west across Ngunuza Vlei towards the setting sun. I turned round where the road went underwater as I wasn’t sure of the depth of the water flowing across the road. Being 2WD, lazy to deflate my tyres, and on my own, I thought best let discretion be the better part of valour! And retracing your steps is a new road anyway – you never cross the same river twice*. On the map, the vlei is south of Mission Rocks. What a joy the frog calls are all over the park after good rains.

I’ll upload pics when I get home – (done) – left my Canon to laptop cable behind! My mighty Canon is a SX620 HS. Lovely pocket camera, tragically ‘discontinued!’

Meanwhile, Gen Z was taking pics of their food. This in Mtunzini, well south of St Lucia.

~~oo0oo~~

Some more birds seen and heard: Livingstone’s Turaco; Tambourine, Red-eyed & Emerald-spotted Doves; Nerina Trogon; Yellow-throated Longclaw; Rufous-naped Lark; Rattlng Cisticola; Red-breasted & Barn Swallow; Black Saw-wing; Jacana; Black Crake; Three-banded Plover; Intermediate Egret; Dabchick (Little Grebe); Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird; Square-tailed Drongo; Hamerkop; Reed Cormorant; Darter; Spurwing & Egyptian Geese; Puffback puffing; Yellow-bellied Greenbul; Black-capped Bulbul; Speckled Mousebird; Orange-breasted & Gorgeous Bush-shrike; African Goshawk; Fish Eagle; Crowned & Trumpeter Hornbills; Burchell’s Coucal; Red-chested Cuckoo; Yellow-billed Kite; Hadeda; European & Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters; Harrier Hawk/Gymnogene; Green-backed Camaroptera; Cape & Pied Wagtails; Crested Guineafowl; Southern Boubou; Water Thick-knee; Brown-hooded & Striped Kingfishers; Wattled Lapwing; Tawny-flanked Prinia; Black-crowned Tchagra;

~~oo0oo~~

For more organised and more frequent trips into Southern Africa’s wild places, see Dewetswild. Dries De Wet recently went to isiMangaliso – he guides photographic safaris. His blogpost on his last visit is what prompted me to look for that duck and that snake-eagle.

*Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher said, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.’

Generous Souls

Off we go to St Lucia estuary for a camping long weekend. Let’s take the minimum guys, we can buy food locally. Just clear out the fridge and bread bin and let’s go. We’ll buy charcoal and meat and etc from the local Spar. I won’t even take any wine! Rather we hit the road now, shop later.

Let’s take a tent for the three teenage girls, and the twelve year-old fella and I will sleep in the back of the pickup. The simple life.

Except I realise at the first tollgate that I have left my wallet in Westville. Complication. To turn back or not. In my rucksack I find Tom’s saving card, daily withdrawal limit R300. I had just changed his password, as we had not used the account for ages, so we were good to go. We just gotta be frugal, kids, we got R300 kuphela.

And that’s where they blew me away. All four of them said “Dad, we’ve got money! You can have our money, Dad”. They each had R200 pocket money for the weekend and offered it freely! What stars.

Thanks guys, I may need that, but I have enough to fill up with diesel and we’ll just go easy and discuss it before we spend anything, OK?

The next morning I managed to activate my eWallet and cellphone banking at an internet cafe so could now draw R1500 a day! Problem solved! I gave them each R100 to thank them for their generous offers. Their eyes looked like chocolates and ice creams!

Off we went to the game reserve (entrance fee R245) and to the water park (R120 for the four of them). We wuz rich! The girls bought swimming shorts with their own money.

St Lucia camping 2

The next day that amount I could draw had ‘kindly’ been reduced to R200 (“for my safety” – Thanks FNB!), so I had to make the speech again, and again they rallied around with their offer of chipping in, but with Tom’s R300 and my R200 we were fine. We ate boerie rolls both nights – cheap!

– St Lucia camping –

Here’s an isimangaliso* pan with buffalo, waterbuck and zebra (click on the pic). The Indian Ocean is just behind that high forested dune:

St Lucia Mar 2014 (5)

Tom got on with fishing . .

. . while the teenage girls did what teenage girls do . .

– Jess took a lovely picture of some grass – with a kudu as a backdrop –

~~oo0oo~~

*isimangaliso means ‘miracle, wonder, surprise’ in isiZulu