Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Somewhere along the route as we were deciding where to go and what to do next, fate intervened and pointed the car in the direction of St Lucia. As mentioned previously, it had never been our intention to stop at this little town, and as such our expectations weren't high.

How wrong can you be?

St Lucia is quite possibly the best place we stopped at; it has everything you could want as a travelling destination without being in-your-face 'touristy'. Everyone we met was friendly, there were plenty of interesting shops and restaurants to visit and we stayed at yet another great hostel (BiBs).

We spent Sunday 6 February settling in and exploring the town, saving further adventuring for the following day.

On a whim, early on Monday morning we drove to the St Lucia Wetlands Game Reserve. We didn't really expect to see much, but once again were taken aback to witness waterbucks, rhinos and zebra. We took the road to Cape Vidal which is described as the natural 'jewel in the crown' of the St Lucia area. And we could see why. Cape Vidal has perhaps the most stunning long, white, sandy beach we have ever seen. As if to top this, we were further amazed by the enormous birds of prey (they looked like eagles) which calmly strolled along the beach oblivious to holidaymakers.

For the afternoon, we had planned a sunset cruise along the St Lucia estuary; we had been promised that this would be the best time to spot crocodiles and hippoptamus, and we weren't disappointed!

Not only did we see these creatures in abundance, but also pied kingfishers, a Goliath heron (as big as it sounds!), grey herons and vultures.

In terms of our South African experiences, we thought it just couldn't get any better than our brief stay in St Lucia. We were wrong...