28:47.00S 32:04.00E

 

The Zululand Yacht Club were the most fantastic hosts. They found space for all 21 yachts and came out in a launch to meet every single arrival no matter what time of day or night. The restaurant and bar seemed to be open full time so we were well catered for. The night the restaurant closed they held a brai (BBQ) so we could get together with the local members which was great fun. They certainly know how to BBQ and the meat is fantastic. Apparently chicken is considered the salad in this land of carnivores. During our ten days there we ate many restaurant meals all served without a green thing in sight.

The yacht club also hosted our prize giving complete with Zulu dancers who were amazing to watch. Happily we achieved another 2nd place. (I didn’t really care, I was just happy to be there!)

 

Richards Bay is ideally situated for access to the great game reserves of Hluhluwe and iMfolozi. The World Arc organisers had arranged a day’s safari for us which didn’t start too well with the driver taking us to the wrong meeting point three hours away. Two hours too far. However the guides more than compensated by taking us on a great safari where we saw an amazing array of wildlife including elephants, white rhino, buffalo, impala, nyala and the highly amusing warthog. Sadly the big cats were not sighted but that could have been due to the overcast, cloudy, rainy weather.

 

Alan and Penny (our Indian Ocean crew) had booked a 3 day safari for us all which gave us a second chance for more sightings. We were collected from the boat and driven to the town of St Lucia where we were booked into a wonderful guest house. Some guesthouse! We had the 3 bedroom house with private pool attached to the guest house, all to ourselves. From our accommodation it was just a short walk into town and all its restaurants. However we were warned that we had to take a torch with us a night because the darker, grassland areas weren’t safe at night. Nothing to do with being mugged, it was because the hippos come out of the water at night to graze on the grassy areas in town and they are particularly bad tempered animals that will attack. Best not to try to take a ‘selfie’ with a hippo.

Our safari included a river trip to see the hippos, a 05.00 hrs start in the iMfolozi game reserve which included a great BBQ lunch and the opportunity to spot some wonderful wildlife, a wetland safari which included a great picnic lunch for us whilst the guide patrolled to keep our lunch safe from the local monkeys and mongoose x 30. The final event was a night time safari through the wetlands which was fascinating. The temperature drops quite dramatically at night so we were huddled in blankets in our truck with a restorative hip flask full of whisky. We had the whole reserve to ourselves and the animals seemed totally unperturbed by the noise of the engine or the bright search light. We were rewarded on our drive back to our guest house with the sight of a couple of hippos grazing on the piece of grass just on our door step.