The St. Lucia wetlands park was now called Isimangalosi Wetlands Park and is home to all the normal big animals plus an incredible array of birds.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISimangaliso_Wetland_Park. Our family loves birds as the kids learned early that you will not always see big game so looking for the incredible birdlife makes a game drive even more fun! Isimangaliso stretches for hundreds of kilometres up the northeastern coast of South Africa and from St. Lucia we visited the southern part which included a big game park and two lovely coastal areas called Mission Rocks and Cape Vidal. Mission Rocks reminded me of Tofino with its endless tide pools filled with lots of life. Cape Vidal is a beautiful beach which we had pretty much to ourselves!
As with all South African Parks you had to be out of the park at 7pm. We had left plenty of time and wanted to drive a loop through the Grasslands area in hopes of seeing more wildlife. We were driving along when we were signalled by a car ahead telling us there was a big elephant in the middle of the road! We could go no farther. We gave them many metres space in case they had to back up quickly. BUT tow other cars came up right behind us despite us trying to signal and then someone from each car GOT OUT OF THE CAR to come chat with us! Who doesn’t love morons? After a good 30-40 minutes, we all had to back up until we could turn around…then we had to race to get out of the park on time. Very exciting!
From the tide pools of Misison Rocks we drove up to Cape Vidal. This was a park campsite with an amazing beach that we virtually had to ourselves. The girls played in the sand but did not go into the water.
