Pete & St Lucia

Leaving at 12:10pm, We touched down 50 minutes later in Durban and this time there was no security checks and we sailed straight through the airport, collected our bags from the carousel and as soon as we left the baggage area Pieter was there to greet us.
It felt like we had never left Africa and we picked up exactly where we left off, laughing and joking all the way to the car park where Karin the car was waiting for us. It was great to see her again aswell and this time I was riding shotgun.
It cost him 850,000 rand to repair the damage on Karin after our last trip and he told us that he was selling her to get 2 more land rovers to match the 3 non starting land rovers he already has, and she should have gone last week but the guy who was dropping her off to him in St Lucia had, had an accident and smashed the front up and he’s only just got it back from the insurance.
It will be a shame when he does get rid off her, we love Karin as much as Pete, but Pete doesn’t get attached to vehicles like us.
From the airport is was a 2 hour drive to St Lucia, Pete took us on a water safari and even though it was really windy we did get to see lots of hippos, Zebra, bee eaters, cormorants and a fish eagle. It also gave us a chance to get our bearings, and we had a great time.
Then Pete took us to our lodgings for the night which is a cosy lodge with a double and single room. It has a large lounge and open plan kitchen and a beautiful bathroom. This is much more fancy than what we’re used to but because it’s the off season Pete said it’s only slightly more expensive than a campsite.
We dumped our stuff in the rooms and then went straight back out for dinner at a restaurant Pete uses regularly on his trips. Pete had Sushi, I had a special burger with local ingredients including a super hot sauce and Ellie had a pizza with spicy chicken and cheese and avocado on top. All of it was superb.
Then it was back to our hotel where we gave Pete the bottle of whiskey we had brought him and he was like a kid at Christmas which really pleased us, and even though it was just 8pm we were all exhausted from a long day and with nothing much else to do we called it a night. Our first proper day had been a success.Read more