Amatigulu 2

Our second day at Amatigulu we woke up early to get a hike in before the heat of the day. Not that we could sleep in with every bird, reptile, and invertebrate in Africa chirping, croaking, ticking, or squeeking in the jungle surrounding us. We also failed to miss the heat of the day, as it was a zillion degrees by 9:00 when we finished our hike.

We were slightly delayed by about a dozen stretchy-horses (or "giraffe" as the call them here) that were standing on the road we were hiking along. Remembering how timid they were yesterday, we just cautiously approached, giving them a lot of time to lope off into the long grass. The biggest one did just that, but a couple of smaller ones (a matter of scale) stood their ground watching us. When we got as close as I was comfortable, one of them gently stomped a front leg a couple of times. That seemed like fair warning to us, and we backed away giving them the road, and bush-whacked our around the herd. They didn't have to be jerks about it.

We then took a canoe down the estuary to the Ocean. It was the world's oldest (and shittiest) fiberglass canoe, but the Parks dude assured us it was safe from snappy-fish (or "crocodile" as they call them here) attack. .

Look at the form: Not sure how the inside of my knees got burned.

The beach was broad, the surf was high, and we were the only people visible over the three miles of beach we could see. There weren't even boats visible

That means no shark nets.











Our third day started at 5 am, as a troop or young brainy-rats (or "vervet monkeys" as they call them here), decided to hold repeated sprinting races across the roof of our tent.

We packed up and drove through a couple of hundred kilometres of tree farms (eucalyptus?) to the little tourist enclave of St. Lucia, where we got our first decent coffee in weeks (flavour 8, strength 7).

And it was a happy Festivas for all...