St. Lucia

Footprints on the beach, Cape Vidal

Our travels in southern Africa continue and we spent the last few days in St. Lucia, South Africa. We rented a car, picked up our friend Rebecca who is working Siteki, Swaziland and headed for the border. As we were filling out forms at the border Rebecca and Leah had their first opportunity to write "physician" as their profession! They are both officially done with all of their medical school rotations and now just have to graduate.

With two physicians on board we drove down to St. Lucia, a small, tourist town on the western coast of South Africa. As we drove in it reminded us a little of Florida -- quite different than any other towns we have seen while here in Africa. Very touristy, lots of surf shops and restaurants (and a lot of white people). Rebecca's roommates from Siteki, Nick and Dan, had arrived in St. Lucia a few days before and were staying at the same hostel. It was fun to travel together with them again.

St. Lucia estuary is a large coastal park that has several different ecosystems within the park. It was amazing to drive around the park through savannas dotted with the acacia tree, pass an estuary, and then end up at the beach on the Indian Ocean with large dunes. We saw several large antelope species with beautiful antlers, a few monkeys and a baboon. The park has rhinos and elephants, but they must of been hiding while we were there. We spent most of the day at the beach body surfing in the waves, playing frisbee and reading. Doesn't everyone celebrate the end of medical school at a beautiful beach on the Indian Ocean? That night Mike bought a huge, fresh red snapper and grilled it for us for dinner, it was delicious!

One reason we picked St. Lucia as a vacation destination was for the snorkeling, which we heard is supposed to be really good. Unfortunately this didn't work out, but it wasn't for lack of effort on our part! We tried so hard to go snorkeling, even getting up in the rain at 5:45 to get out there for low tide. We got out there with our snorkeling gear walking past the people there to fish who looked at us like we were crazy and once we saw the ocean we realized why -- it was so rough and choppy. Too bad, next time we are in South Africa we will definitely have to go snorkeling!

Our next adventure is Phophonyane falls here in Swaziland for a night and then up to Kruger National Park in South Africa for several days. We can't wait!