Our Blog - South Africa Safari - Day 5

We left Cape Town and headed north, flying to Durban. Then we drove to St. Lucia, and the scenery here was a bit less mountainous.

We stopped by lunch at a little road-side place but they had the most gorgeous Bird of Paradise flowers that I have seen lately. The ones in botanical garden in Cape Town were already gone for the season, but these were great. These specific ones are Strelitzia reginae which are native to the KwaZulu-Natal region that we were in.

Another quick stop, this time on a little beach where we had the opportunity to put our toes in the Indian Ocean. There were some nice sand-models of some of the local animals, and as you can see, it was a nice beach.

So, the sign on the beach gives a warning for sharks, crocodiles, and hippos!

Last stop for the day was the Saint Lucia Estuary, which is one of the largest estuary's in Africa. It is home to more than 800 hippos as well as an estimated 1200 Nile crocodiles.

We only really saw hippos, and, what we didn't realize, is that we would really only see the tops of their heads. Part of this could be that March is the end of the rainy season and, therefore, the water level was fairly high. After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal. They basically sleep in the water during the day and come out at dusk to eat. These (we were told) were standing on the bottom near the shore and they can go under and hold their breath for up to 6 minutes. I picked out the best pictures and videos, but what you'll see is basically a part of their head in the water, and sometimes part of their back.

This is a group with some babies in the middle of the group, and at the end, one of the larger ones comes partly out of the water..

One of the closer pictures with 2 heads.

This guy decided to walk over and partially hide in a bush along with another hippo.

Another group, and the video shows them coming up and down, and one of them blowing a bit of air on the way up.

And then the sunset over the estuary.

At the hotel, they had a Zulu tribe dance show, during which I grabbed a few pictures and video but they aren't really that good (the lights were giving me issues).

You can go back to the main Safari page or continue on to Day 6