St Lucia lies on the South African east coast, about 240 kilometres north of Durban and 240 kilometres south of Kosi Bay and the Mozambique border. It is the gateway to a series of sea and freshwater lakes that make up the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, as well as the coastal turtle breeding beaches and coral reefs of Maputaland Marine Protected Area, which are part of the area that forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The park and surrounds are serviced by the small coastal village of St Lucia, which is perfectly positioned on the southern entrance to the park and the mouth of the estuary. The village has a single main road on which you can find numerous restaurants, fishing shops, tour operators offering trips into the lakes to see the wildlife and abundant birdlife, deep-sea fishing, and whale watching, as well as small supermarkets, accommodation letting agents, and fuel stations.
Way back in time, at the tender age of about nineteen, three of my colleagues and I travelled down in a single cab pick-up from Johannesburg to St Lucia for a week’s rock fishing. In those days, there were very few restrictions, and the long, open beaches of the St Lucia estuary provided an ideal launch site for the many private ski-boat fishermen who made this stretch of coastline a regular playground.
We camped in two-man tents in the large, wooded St Lucia parks board camp site, which runs along the beaches immediately north of the estuary. At the crack of dawn on the following day we headed into the reserve to an outcrop known as Mission Rocks.
One of the chaps in our party was a regular fisherman and knew the area well. We parked our pick-up next to the rangers’ office and walked over the sand dunes to the rocks below. It was a cloudless day with a very mild breeze as we clambered over the rocks heading south along the coast for about five hundred metres or so. Our leader took us to a narrow, half-moon, pebbled beach, which was framed by a substantial outcrop of rocks on either side. The top of the nearside rocky outcrop was both quite large and reasonably flat, offering enough room for all four of us to fish from in comfort.
At that time of year it is the rainy season, and the rivers spill large quantities of soil and debris into the ocean from the many rivers and streams that flow from the mountains in the hinterland to the Indian Ocean, where the warm Mozambique current sweeps the brown-coloured water down the coast for a thousand kilometres and more.
I was initially sceptical when our experienced leader explained that there was a natural deep gully midway between the two rocky outcrops where Cape salmon often gathered deep down in the hole to escape the murky sea above. But we baited up and dropped our lines into the ‘hole’, as he suggested.
Well, we couldn’t believe our luck when within seconds of our bait dropping below the water, we all struck, and all landed a Cape salmon between five and seven kilograms. The bait went back on, and in no time we landed another four fish. This continued without interruption for a few hours. It was singularly the most successful rock fishing experience of my life.
We had gone on the trip ill-prepared. We had very little water, nothing to eat, and no suntan lotion. By the time we reached midday, the fish lay all over the surface of the rocks we had been fishing from and we were very sunburnt, very thirsty, and completely exhausted.
In order to carry the fish back to the car park, which was half a kilometre back up the coast, we found two lengths of dead tree branches the sea had thrown up onto the shore in some distant past. We cut pieces of gut from our reels and strung the fish through the gills along the logs. With one man carrying a log in the front and one in the back, we made our way, clambering, falling, and puffing over the rocks and along the shoreline to the path that led back over the dune to the rangers’ office.
The load was very heavy, but we trudged slowly on, regularly having to stop to take a breather. By the time we reached our vehicle, we were well and truly worn out. We were at least able to rehydrate from the freshwater tap alongside the buildings, before loading the fish into the open truck-bed. By the time we were finished, the entire bed was full of salmon. It was a massive haul, one normally associated with ski-boat fishing, and certainly most unusual from off the shore.
We made our way back to camp for some cold beer and a fresh fish braai (barbeque) before collapsing into a deep sleep until the following morning. Apart from having to visit a doctor for some pretty painful sunburn, we were able to sell our catch to local storekeepers, the proceeds of which not only paid for our week-long holiday but left some over for when we got home. All in all, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
On another visit to St Lucia, I was fishing with some friends off the riverbank quite close to the mouth when my hook was taken by a Cape salmon that we estimated must have weighed thirty kilograms or more. I battled to land the monster on not too heavy tackle. It kept me busy for about twenty minutes before I finally could see the fish as I drew closer and closer to the embankment.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large shark glided through the water, swiftly and at incredible and silent speed. In one bite the shark cut the salmon in half, leaving only the tail section floating haplessly on the water before disappearing to the depths below to offer nourishment to the lesser schools below.
On yet another occasion, Ann and I were in St Lucia with some of my Eshowe and UK family. We had gone to a local restaurant for a proper night out and were quietly driving back to our chalets when we turned a corner and almost ran into a three-tonne hippopotamus strolling along in the road. I wasn’t going much faster than twenty kilometres an hour, so it was easy to stop. But Mr Hippo didn’t enjoy the intrusion, and decided to let us know. Fortunately, he was in a reasonable mood that night and restricted his lesson-giving to a short charge and a snort before turning and trundling off into the bush. But it goes without saying that we all had to recapture our hearts from our throats and return them safely to where they belonged before we were able to continue our short journey.
A few years after that, Ann and I arrived at the St Lucia caravan and camping site in our new caravan. It was outside the school holidays, so we had most of the park to ourselves. We found a fabulous spot and set up camp for a week’s stay. No sooner had we settled down to a light lunch when a section of the canvas flap that closes off the tent section from the undercarriage of the caravan, was lifted off the ground and the little brown face of a vervet monkey peered through. He was shortly to be followed by a couple of his brothers and sisters.
Of course, we clapped our hands and shouted some pretty severe demands for their immediate withdrawal. This helped temporarily, but they only scattered back a couple of metres before regrouping to consider a further assault.
Ann got up and walked out from under the canopy only to see a larger monkey sitting on top of the ‘monkey-proof’ dustbin scratching around for our discarded foodstuffs inside the bin. Undeterred, she boldly marched up to the bin, bent forward with a stern look on her face and shouted Boo! a couple of times while throwing her head and shoulders forward in rhythm with the ‘Boo’.
The monkey just sat there staring at Ann with a sort of, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ kind of look. Then it stood up on its hind legs, and while mimicking Ann’s attempt to shoo it away, the monkey hunched its shoulders forward at Ann and simultaneously let out a series of boo-like snorts back, which gave Ann the fright of her life. She retreated in fear that the monkey meant some kind of monkey business she hadn’t expected.
When we left our camp to go out, we zipped everything up and packed all the edible goods away behind lock and key. But I left the pop-up top open to allow for some circulation of air through the gauze. This was a mistake, as we were later to learn. Upon our return we found that our monkey friends had torn the gauze netting asunder to gain entrance to the van, and although their search for food had been in vain, they certainly didn’t wipe their feet before entering, as was evidenced by the muddy footprints and handprints dotted all over the place!
It was on this visit to St Lucia that we decided to book ourselves on a whale-watching trip. Being well-groomed in the dos and don’ts of sea travel, we took all the necessary precautions to mitigate sea sickness discomfort, which included avoiding a heavy meal the night before.
At sunrise we reported to the ski-boat skipper at his launch site on the southern beach. We were met by two young couples from the United States who had also booked themselves on the trip. Everyone was in a jolly mood, and we exchanged a few tales, jokes, and jabs before helping the wise old skipper push his boat into the waves and prepare for departure.
Soon we were off, each of us with a regulation life vest securely fastened around our torsos and held on tightly as the skipper deftly manoeuvered the boat across the incoming waves until we settled in the relative calmness of the sea swells beyond.
At this point we were able to take off the vests, and making sure to store them within easy reach, take up positions along the railings in preparation of the promised encounters.
It wasn’t long before we saw the spume of hunchback whales, and we were soon within sight of four magnificent creatures gliding through the ocean, each with a calf in tow.
But then our American friends started to get sick. One by one they leaned dangerously far over the edge of the railings to pay homage to Neptune until nothing was left. Even then their bodies sought to find the impossible as they retched in attempts to discard the very stomachs themselves.
Ann and I had quietly climbed the stepladder that took us up to the platform above the deck where the skipper was navigating the boat to enjoy as clear a view of the whale as possible. We chuckled when he quietly shared his thoughts. Our visitors had a big night out on prawns with white wine, it seems, he declared with a wry smile. Maybe a tad too rich, I’d guess!
One of the golden rules of these trips is that once you are out at sea, you don’t return just because one or more passengers becomes seasick. So, we continued on our journey regardless. In due course, our fellow travelers did settle a little, although they certainly looked a tad worse for wear for the rest of the trip.
The skipper explained to us that the whales swim all the way up the east coast of Africa from Antarctica every year and give birth to their young in the warm waters of the Mozambique channel before making their way back for the summer at the South Pole. A few years later we would witness this migration from our home in Ramsgate. Starting from around June, and running all the way through to Christmas, almost daily, we could watch literally hundreds of whales, first swimming north, and then later returning southwards with their young.
We saw the whale’s so-called ‘footprint’, a large, round formation in the water caused by the upward thrust of the water displaced by the whale’s tail as it propels the three-tonne animal through the water. We saw the calves, and we watched as the gigantic animals propelled themselves clear out of the water to come crashing back down in a massive splash of water that can be seen from kilometres away.
Giant leatherback and loggerhead turtles are the other fascination of St Lucia from the south to the Maputaland turtle sanctuary in the north. St Lucia has the southernmost nesting beaches for these turtles. The leatherback is the largest reptile on the planet, weighing in at as much as nine hundred kilograms, and they come ashore on the beaches of this coast from December to February to lay their eggs.
Both types of these turtle lay as many as one hundred eggs per nest. This is nature’s way of protecting the species because the eggs and the baby turtles are the target of inter alia, seabirds, monkeys, and jackals. It is estimated that only 0.02 per cent of all hatchlings actually make it to adulthood.
St Lucia is a hidden gem among the many along the coast of Southern Africa and we are blessed to have travelled across it extensively in the east, south, and west on land, by sea, and on a couple occasions, by air.
But of course, we always remember never to say ‘boo’ to a monkey again!