We slept until 7am and were a tad jaded after our travels and night drive - today was an all day drive called the heritage tour which took us through part of the ecosystem to Cape Vidal and back.
We were joined by a French couple and their 5 year old son who were on holiday from their secondment to Mayotte (an island in the Comoros, just off the South African coast, who had voted to stay French and were now a department of France)
Isimangaliso is the renamed great St Lucia wetland park and a UNESCO world heritage site. After a chequered history Nelson Mandela made the visionary decision to return it to its natural state and thereby preserve its 8 unique intertwined ecosystems; the 5 main ones are: the Marine - 280km of Indian Ocean coastline warmed by the Agullas current and home to turtles, whales,dolphins and other marine life; the Eastern Shores - the wetlands, grassy plains and famous dunes, which act as a natural barrier between the ocean and the land, to the east of lake St Lucia; Lake St Lucia itself which is the largest estuarine system in the world - 85km long but only 1 metre deep and home to hundreds of hippos(1200) and crocodiles (2000); the Western Shores - the driest area - and composed of savannah and thornveld and where the elephants are found ; and the Mkuze swamps, at the north end of the lake, which is an expansive papyrus wetland.
Briefly, in the past settlers removed all the wildlife, thinking if they thrives then so could their cattle but thanks to tetse fly and other bugs livestock rearing failed; they tried planting pines but they sucked out too much water and took 30 rather that 15 years to grow so thankfully after these failures it was returned to its proper place in the natural world.......a fantastic and unique ecosystem focussed on its wildlife.
On the way to Cape Vidal the new and and special species we saw were the thriving white rhino. Thankfully because of the visible anti poaching patrols and the frequency of visitors the rhinos on the eastern side seem well protected and safe. When we got to the cape the wind was blowing hard - good for kite flying - we did walk up the sandy beach but then retreated to the forested area to watch the sea and wildlife from a warmer spot. The grey headed gulls are great looking gulls with a dowdy name - they are slim, white birds with a grey head but have striking red beaks and red legs which makes them stand out from the crowd - and one of my favourites. The vervet monkeys were active - looking for scraps on the BBQs and opportunities to steal from unsuspecting tourists - John spotted one take someone's eggs, he tried to grab the bag that they were looking into which had bread inside, but it took the bread and left him holding the bag - crafty monkey - the hapless short-lived owner of the food then left his wife in charge while he went off to buy some more!
I was however busy watching the sea as we had seen several humpback whales, migrating to Madagascar to breed and calve, breaching.
Fun over we walked up the hill to a picnic area where lunch was being prepared - I photographed the monkeys in the trees particularly the rare Somango monkeys which are only found here. We then sat chatting at the table and all of a sudden then was something heavy falling, a big thump as something hit and brushed past us - a spirited large male Somango monkey had leapt onto the table from a branch above and quickly exited with our bananas - he retreated to a tree nearby and sat eating them while we looked helplessly on - today's photograph!
The rest of lunch was uneventful but after lunch we were visited by a large troop of banded mongooses searching for scraps and digging for insects and a red duiker who walked across looking for food and grazing.
On the way back we hunted for and found the recently introduced black rhino which had become habituated to the car and came quite close ( when he first arrived he had chased it!) It was lovely to watch him as he browsed his way towards us - it made you question why these beautiful animals are poached for their useless (except to them) horn?
The other new species, for this trip, seen today were the stone chat, fish eagle and snake eagle.
All in all a great day; it really helped us start to understand the ecosystem with some unique sitings.
In the early evening we walked into the town, as its very safe, to have dinner, we tried another restaurant tonight,La Brazza, and both chose the same really nice locally caught fish dish.
It felt very late because it gets dark around 6pm but it wasn't!