Tag Archives: Mission Rocks

iSimangaliso’s Eastern Shores – A Photographic Journey (Part 4)

Time to wrap up the photographic trip report of our recent visit to the Eastern Shores of Lakes St. Lucia, with a gallery of some of the larger animals we encountered on land and sea in the place of miracles and wonders – the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

Baboon

Banded Mongoose

Blue Wildebeest

Buffalo

What a buffalo looks like just before he charges!

Buffalo

Bushbuck

Crocodile

Elephant

Hippopotamus

Humpback Whale

Impala

Kudu

Plains Zebra

Red Duiker

Red Bush Squirrel

Reedbuck

Samango Monkey

Spotted Hyena

Vervet Monkey

Warthog

Waterbuck

Follow the links for more of our posts about St. Lucia town, Cape Vidal and Mission Rocks.

iSimangaliso’s Eastern Shores – A Photographic Journey (Part 3)

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On the Eastern Shores of Lake St. Lucia, the amazing diversity of life forms comes in all sizes. The star of this collection of photos showcasing some of the smaller creatures that crossed our path on our recent visit must be the tiny frog that somehow got into my mug while we were enjoying coffee and rusks one morning at Mziki viewpoint near Mission Rocks. Exactly when it got into my coffee is unclear – I had put my mug down a few times to take pictures – and I have no idea how much of my coffee I had shared with the little guy. Joubert only noticed it sitting in the cup when I took my last swig as we started packing up to leave. Lucky for it, I drink a lot of milk in my coffee so it wouldn’t have been scalded.

Dancing Acraea

This juvenile Painted Reed Frog climbed into my coffee cup at Mziki viewpoint one morning – at which stage during the drinking process I don’t know…

Common Dotted Border

Crab in a tidal pool at Mission Rocks

Dusky Acraea

Giant Legless Skink

Praying Mantis at Catalina Bay

Baby Common Tropical House Gecko

Common Tropical House Gecko

Large spider on a dustbin at Mission Rocks

Variable Skink

Hermit Crab – iSimangaliso Wetland Park

Follow the links for more of our posts about St. Lucia town, Cape Vidal and Mission Rocks.

iSimangaliso’s Eastern Shores – A Photographic Journey (Part 2)

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The iSimangaliso Wetland Park is a bird-watcher’s paradise – 526 bird species have been recorded within its borders!

During the few days we recently spent on the Eastern Shores of Lake St. Lucia, we managed to tick 109 kinds of birds, and had we been better at identifying the “Little Brown Jobs” our list would undoubtedly have been quite a bit longer still.

This incredible diversity is surely due to the Park’s rich variety of habitats, and our “success” in connecting with so many kinds of birds can only be ascribed to the terrific collection of roads, hides, picnic sites and other localities so easily accessible to visitors.

We hope you enjoy this sample of iSimangaliso’s birdlife!

African Dusky Flycatcher

African Harrier Hawk

African Olive Pigeon

African Oystercatcher

African Stonechat

Baillon’s Crake

Bearded Scrub Robin

Black Saw-wing

Brown Snake Eagle

Brown-hooded Kingfisher

Burchell’s Coucal

Cape White-eye

Caspian Tern

Collared Sunbird (female)

Crested Guineafowl – iSimangaliso Wetland Park

Crowned Hornbill

Dark-backed Weaver

Dark-capped Bulbul

Denham’s Bustard

Fiery-necked Nightjar

Fiscal Flycatcher

Grey Waxbill

Grey-headed Gull

Southern Grey-headed Sparrow

Hadeda

Kurrichane Thrush

Neddicky

Olive Sunbird

African Paradise Flycatcher (female)

Pink-backed Pelican

Pink-backed Pelicans – iSimangaliso Wetland Park

Rattling Cisticola

Red-billed Teals

Red-capped Robin-Chat

Red-eyed Dove

Black-winged Lapwing

Southern Black Flycatcher

Southern Masked Weaver

Tawny-flanked Prinia

White-eared Barbets – iSimangaliso Wetland Park

White-faced Whistling Duck

White-fronted Plover

White-winged Widowbird

Woolly-necked Stork

Yellow Weaver

Yellow-billed Egrets

Yellow-breasted Apalis

Yellow-fronted Canary

Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird

Yellow-throated Longclaw

Follow the links for more of our posts about St. Lucia town, Cape Vidal and Mission Rocks.

iSimangaliso’s Eastern Shores – A Photographic Journey (Part 1)

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We’re fresh back from a terrific holiday in two very special wild places in northern Kwazulu-Natal. Our first destination was the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, and specifically the Eastern Shores of Lake St. Lucia, where we spent one night at Manzini Chalets in the holiday town of St. Lucia, and four nights in a log cabin at Cape Vidal.

Manzini Chalets #9, St. Lucia Town, July 2017

Cape Vidal Chalet 9, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, July 2017

I can’t think of a better way to start off the report back on our trip than with a few landscape photos that illustrates why iSimangaliso is a land of “miracles and wonders”, and one of our favourite destinations!

Where Lake St. Lucia meets the Indian Ocean

The beach at Cape Vidal

Sunrise over the Eastern Shores

Mziki viewsite

Catalina Bay

Sunset over Catalina Bay

The Red Dunes at eSibomvini

Lake Bhangazi

Mission Rocks – iSimangaliso Wetland Park

Follow the links for more of our posts about St. Lucia town, Cape Vidal and Mission Rocks.

The rugged beauty of Mission Rocks

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Today a very popular picnic and fishing spot north of St. Lucia Town in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, Mission Rocks is named for a Catholic mission station established in the area in 1888. The path leading from the parking area to the beach opens onto a scene of rugged, rocky beauty, revealing rock pools teeming with life at low tide and impressing with the thundering of crashing waves at high tide. There’s a sandy, open beach 500m northwards of the rocks, with a sea-cave where thousands of bats roost.

Mission Rocks

Mission Rocks picnic spot

Mission Rocks

de Wet family shadows at Mission Rocks

Mission Rocks

Keep an eye open for the vervet monkeys while having a picnic at Mission Rocks

Crab at Mission Rocks

Mission Rocks

Fiscal flycatcher

On the way to Mission Rocks, the uMziki viewpoints and picnic site, set right in the coastal forest, is a worthwhile stop. From atop the dune there’s views over Lake Saint Lucia to the west and the Indian Ocean to the east, and down below in the forested picnic site there’s an astounding variety of birds that would normally be very shy but here seems quite habituated to having humans around. There’s also usually a couple of red duiker to be seen.