We had to start taking our malaria pills today. We have a new driver in Preggie for the remainder of our trip on a comfortable coach. Under cloudy skies we headed north and east to St. Lucia. One of the sights along the way was a giant casino. We drove through beautiful rolling hills which grow sugarcane, the primary product of Durban. Stuart reminded us that prior to sugarcane, the biggest export was ivory. We learned about the challenges surrounding elephants and the need for conservation and also for control due to the heavy cost of maintenance. Our first real stop was at the St. Lucia Estuary where we loaded onto a boat with a group of Germans and had a great lunch while we cruised through the estuary finding hippos, crocs and several types of birds. We stopped at an open market where the selection was overwhelming! We stayed 2 nights at the Ghost Mountain Inn in Mkuze, Kwazulu Natal. The first night, I found a huge bug in the room which Bruce had to murder. This was not the best hotel and it could do with a lot of cleaning. The visit to Lake St. Lucia was interesting but Bruce and I both agreed that we could have done without it as it was a bit long and a bit boring after awhile. We called Daniel tonight and were amazed at how inexpensive the call was (9.47 rand, which is just over one dollar Canadian!).
Durban is one of the most African-feeling of the cities of South Africa. It is home to the largest number of Indians outside of India. Gandhi practiced law here and Winston Churchill visited as a young man. It is the third largest city in South Africa and Africa’s busiest port. It has about 12 KM of beach front with renowned surfing. Durban is known for its warm and humid weather. The area around Durban contains some of the battle sites of the Boer War (1899-1902). It was the longest, bloodiest and most costly war fought by Britain in 100 years. The Boers were Afrikaner descendants of Dutch immigrants and they were defeated as they fought for independence from Britain.
St. Lucia was proclaimed a World Heritage Site in 1999. At the time, Unesco said: ‘The interplay of the park’s environmental heterogeneity with major floods and coastal storms, and a transitional geographic location between sub-tropical and tropical Africa, has resulted in exceptional species diversity and ongoing speciation. The mosaic of landforms and habitat types creates superlative scenic vistas. The site contains critical habitat for a range of species from Africa’s marine, wetland and savannah environments.’ St. Lucia Lake is part of the St. Lucia estuary system, the largest estuarine system in Africa. The mouth of the estuary is located about 150 miles north of Durban along the east coast of South Africa. A narrow, seven-mile long channel connects the main body of St. Lucia with the western Indian Ocean. With a maximum width of 13 miles and a length of about 40 miles, Lake St. Lucia covers an area of between 115 and 135 square miles. The depth of the lake ranges between three and eight feet. In some years, the water’s salinity has risen to three times the level of sea water in northern parts of the lake, causing mass die-offs of aquatic plants and animals. The watershed of St. Lucia covers several hundred square miles. Besides water from the Indian Ocean that enters the mouth of the estuary, water from the Mkhuze, Nyalazi, and Hluhluwe rivers flows into the lake. In the south, the Umfolozi Swamps border the lake as does part of the Mkuze Swamps in the north. A large peninsula to the east separates the lake from the Indian Ocean. Here, over the last 25,000 years, wind and other natural forces created the world’s highest forested sand dunes that rise 600 feet.
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