St. Luica

St. Lucia is a very cute, jungly, green town. Again, like in most South African places, there is not much to do, except maybe one thing. And here it was some wetlands tour. I decided to skip that. I went to a few agencies, when the bosses were out, and asked who was there about the trips (unfortunately I have to say that these were black people). I just got a blank stare with eyes hectically moving from side to side. Suddenly after the longest pause I get an answer: "The trip leaves in 2 hours". What trip leaves in 2 hours? How much is it? But I didn't even bother to ask. I was very agitated inside, but mumbled a thank you and left. Next place, same thing. There were no prices for all the tours, and I was interested in one that didn't. I asked the employee who called her boss to ask the price. Again, I had follow up questions, but didn't even bother. I wonder why if the agency has about 5 trips, and you work there for some time, how hard is it to learn just a little bit about a place where you work at? I noticed that they don't have a "what if" logic, or thinking ahead logic... very bizarre. While figuring out what to do, I went for a walk. Arrived at a little harbor, and there were Vervet monkeys. There were so many of them, and these are the strangest monkeys I've seen. The males have neon glowing blue genitals, and females had breasts of the same color. Very impressive! So I was hanging around watching them. They were stealing guard’s food, and fighting over it. Note: there is a guard at every parking space to tell the people where to park, and to watch after the cars while the owners are out and about. For a regular size plaza, there would be maybe 8 people watching the cars. He approached me and asked laughing, "can you tell which of the monkeys is male?" hahaha ... now, I would expect that kind of question of a 9 year old Andrew (my brother), but not from a 20 something person. While I was watching the monkeys, people started to gather, and went to the boats that went on a hippo tour. I waited for a bit, and decided to ask how much these trips run for, I had only R90 with me (and the trip costs double), but I figured that if they have any more space left then they would rather take me for that amount, than to make nothing at all. I approached the boat that had the least number of workers waiting outside, and asked how much does the trip cost. One guy answered me, while the other said, come on, get in, I'll give you a promotional price, so I got in. A promotional price included a free ride, free water and chocolates, and because he drove the boat and I sat beside him, I got to ask all the questions :)) So not that bad :) A friend of the captain (Roger) joined as well (both of them at their 50s-60s), and basically they were entertaining me all the way. The hippos themselves weren't that interesting, they barely move, and just wiggle their ears when get out of the water. And the best part of the day didn't even begin. The captain and his wife live in a tent city village, Roger came for a weekend to visit, and another couple of friends, so they invited me to come join them for dinner. They dropped me off at the hostel to change to longer cloths, while went to a shop to buy food. It was such a relaxing evening. All 3 of the men knew how to play a guitar, so we had a mini concert going on, we ate sausages, very tasty bacon, white wine, and relaxed under the stars. This was my best evening in South Africa for sure! Was nice to get out of the crazy backpacker rhythm and spend some time with "normal" people :) Roger dropped me off at the hostel, and I was already getting ready for bed when the a staff member came in and said that there is somebody is waiting for me outside. Turns out that Roger came back because while he was driving, he came across a hippo on the street! Because the town is right on the river, the hippos get out of the river at night to feed, and a bunch of them end up on the city streets. That was very fun and nerve racking to watch, because as you might know, there are more deaths caused by hippos than any other animals combined in SA. All the cars (like 6 of them) surrounded it like a star. First we were standing with a side to it, but then Roger reversed and stood straight in front of it, so the lights of the car would shine on it, and that was like 3 meters away. That's when I got scared, because if it were to charge at us, we would have no way out. But nothing happened, and I was super excited to actually see it, and that close! Roger told me a little bit about politics. As you know before the white party was in power, then the ANC (African National Congress) took over. They put "affirmative action" in plan, which means that in a country where there are 47 million blacks and 7 million whites, then the same ratio will be at work force. Now, in all government organization blacks took charge, and the people who work there have to educate the blacks in order for them to get the position, and Roger is the one who's teaching them right now. The companies will now hire 3 blacks instead of 1 white to "properly" do the job. Needless to say, now there are a lot of whites who work overseas. But back then I could not understand what he was saying to me... so more on that later. Btw, the flag of SA has changed since ANC took over. And if you'll look at it, it has a horizontal shape of a "Y", signifying 2 nations coming/uniting as 1. Unfortunately there are no pictures of that day, because I just went for a walk ... completely unprepared. Trivia question of the blog: Why do the "big 5" called that way? Next day woke up at 4:30am to go to safari drive. It was a half day safari from about 6:00-12:00. Didn't see that many animals, and they don't really do much. They either just stand there or eat, no action going on. So in 6 hours we saw a bunch of zebras and antelopes (springbok), 3 giraffes who run away from us the minute they saw us, 1 elephant, 2 turtles, some hogs, 1 buffalo, some wildebeest, 3 rhinos but really far away, and 1 cheetah, also far away. I'm a bit sad that we didn't stay longer with the cheetah, because it looked like it might have waited to catch some lunch. Cause nearby where the springboks and they weren't feeding like usual, but standing there like frozen making these strange sounds and staring at one spot ... the cheetah spot. But we waited for 10 minutes and nothing has happened :( I wonder why they didn't move away from it?? It might sound like we've seen a lot, but there would be hours of driving without seeing anything at all ... so it was quite exhausting. Trivia hint: the big 5 are: lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, & rhino. On the way back on a highway and outside the park, we've seen the best attraction. We've noticed that there were some cars parked on the side of the road, so we stopped as well. Looked at a side, and there was a huge herd of elephants in there! I think I counted 30, but some might have still been hidden. Then they started moving closer and closer to the road, so they were gonna cross it. One car in front of us drove a bit closer, so there was not much gap, and the elephant just stood there without moving, I had to yell at them to move backwards. Turns out elephants are like penguins, if you're on their path, they would just stand there, and wait for you to move :) Then the leader - I'd guess, crossed the road, and once on the other side, signaled for everybody else to cross. And there it was, all these elephants on the road, moms encouraging the kids to cross quicker, some elephants still eating leaves that they picked on the side... very cute :) We didn’t see the cheetah hunt, but at least we’ve seen that! At night with the hostel we went for a hippo hunt night drive. Saw 4 hippos but they were not as close as the one I saw with Roger, and they run away when we approached. But the coolest thing was when we got to some swamp, where there are 30 different kinds of frogs living there, and the sounds that they made were just unbelievable ... a frog symphony :) kinda reminded me of Bermuda :) Trivia answer: those are the 5 most dangerous animals for hunters. They would charge as opposed to run away, and kill the most hunters. https://picasaweb.google.com/evadikushin501/StLucia#