#Animals

St. Lucia, the tourist town along South Africa’s northern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) coast – not to be confused with St. Lucia the Caribbean island – has near-mythical status among South Africans. The town is completely surrounded by iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is famous for its ubiquitous hippos, who spend most of their time in the St. Lucia estuary but are also known to stroll about town at night.

A couple of weeks ago, I complained to a friend that I never have good big cat sightings when I go on safari. (I know it’s an absurd thing to complain about. But I’m a travel blogger in South Africa, after all.) The very next day, I received a last-minute invitation to Thanda Safari, a five-star game lodge in KwaZulu-Natal.

To finish off my Western Cape road trip (read about the earlier parts of the trip here, here, and here), Thorsten and I spent two days at the De Hoop Collection in a remote part of South Africa’s Overberg region. The De Hoop Collection is a privately owned lodge inside the De Hoop Nature Reserve, which is run by the provincial government entity CapeNature.

After spending two days overlooking the beach in Plettenberg Bay (see part 1), our group of lady journalists took a quick hop over the Outeniqua Mountains to spend two days in the desert town of Oudtshoorn.