St. Lucia is home to the highest vegetated sand dunes in the world. Off in the distance you can see some of them.
Some more pictures of a few of the other birds we saw. I attempted to name the types in this post, but I am not sure if they are correct so take that with some caution.
Like with so many other things in Africa, the things that you come for and the things that you find you end up loving can be so different. We got on the boat for the hippo/croc tour, but what I ended up finding so amazing was all the birds, especially the African fish eagle. Here are a few pictures of the fish eagle that we took. Pictures of some of the other amazing birds to come.
Continuing the hippo tour… here is a crocodile.
Lake St. Lucia is home to the largest number of hippos and crocs in the world. The water here is also teeming with bull sharks and other deadly predators. This is not a lake you want to dip your toe.
After whale watching, changing into dry clothes in a restaurant bathroom, and trying to warm up by loitering in stores we got on another boat to go for a hippo and croc tour. This was a much different boat ride and the only ripple in the water was from a surfacing hippo. We tried to make up for the fact that we couldn’t take a single picture on the whale watching boat by taking a million pictures on this trip… so there will be about twenty blog posts to follow with some of the greatest ones.
On Saturday morning we went whale watching. The disclaimer of the tour company said something like, “We cannot guarantee you that you will not get wet.” What it should of said is wear a wetsuit and prepare to hold on for dear life. At one point towards the end of the tour our Captain turned to Katie, Nina and me and said, unprompted by the way, he spent three months in the Bering Sea and that was when he thought he was going to die on a boat… It was super rough, but what made him think this was an appropriate time to say this to us??
Despite the waves, and the inability to take a single picture as both hands were needed to hang on at all times, we got to see a lot of whales breaching. It was pretty incredible to witness.
On Friday Katie, Nina, and I drove down to St. Lucia, South Africa. St. Lucia is right on the coast and is not only home to the greatest population of hippos and crocs (the guide book says you may see hippos wandering down the side streets of town – this is not cute, only dangerous), but it is also a great place to go whale watching!
That’s Young Eyes (Nina) in the backseat.
Fires
I know I have addressed this before, but it is something that continues to amaze us. People light fires all over here and there seems to be no control or concern about them. We see roughly 3 to 5 fires a day depending on how much we are out and about. Most of them are pretty big too. Please notice the flames behind the house… and, above the house! Should we call the fire department? I don’t think so, it looks under control to me…
On Sunday we celebrated Caroline’s birthday. Caroline is the other colleague of Katie’s here in Swaziland. She is from the UK and just darling. I love hanging out with her, if I can get her to hang out with me, because I always have a great time. She also talks funny with her English accent and has funny words for things, like instead of calling the trunk of a car a trunk, she calls it, “the boot!” Oh, Caroline… so funny!
I sincerely apologize I did not get a picture with your eyes open! I forgot to pull the camera out during the singing of happy birthday until it was just about over and the other two pictures were so blurry, you can’t see anything… She has beautiful eyes too… so sad I missed them in this picture.
There was a barn party! I was sick so skipped attending but was dragged out to take pictures of them all dressed up before they went. The costumes were well worth getting out of bed. I heard the party was a blast… enough said on that one. I was sent some pictures from the actually party and will post those soon too.
Katie and I went and played golf with our neighbor, Alan, at Usoto on Saturday. It was a pleasant course and there was only one other group of two on the whole course. Turned out we knew them too. Swaziland is a very small place.
A lion ate my ball.
I went with my neighbor to a school they started. The kids put on a play for us and it was the cutest thing ever! I, unfortunately, didn’t remember until after the play that I had my phone with the camera on it in my pocket… so sad. Alan brought a kite and we flew it with the children after the play. Very fun day.
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