South Africa: iSimangaliso Wetland Park: South Africa’s Wild Coast

🌿 South Africa: iSimangaliso Wetland Park

A UNESCO World Heritage Site since December 1999 — with Nelson Mandela himself attending the ceremony, which tells you this was no ordinary bit of ribbon-cutting — iSimangaliso Wetland Park (formerly the Greater St. Lucia Wetlands Park, renamed in 2007 to its current Zulu name meaning “miracle and wonder”) is quite simply one of the most extraordinary places we have ever had the pleasure of visiting. The park incorporates an astonishing variety of habitats ranging from the Ubombo Mountains to grasslands, forests, wetlands, mangroves and ancient coastal dunes, magnificent beaches, and coral reefs. It is, in a word, spectacular.

🐢 The Night Turtle Tour

We had also booked ourselves on a night tour to find sea turtles on the beaches of iSimangaliso Wetland Park. Now, I’ll be honest with you — when Karen first suggested this, I thought it sounded like standing about in the dark waiting for something that might not turn up. Which, as it turned out, was a fairly accurate description. But more on that in a moment.

Our tour started at six o’clock in the evening, with us being collected from outside our hotel in St Lucia town. There were another six people with us in the open-sided game drive vehicle, a cheerful enough bunch, and we set off in the warm early-evening air with a reasonable degree of optimism. We drove the short distance to the park entrance, passed through the gate, and found ourselves on the main road heading north through the reserve.

After about thirty minutes of driving, we came to an abrupt halt. And not the gentle sort of halt where the guide points excitedly at a bird. No, this was a proper full-stop. Up ahead, a large group of elephants had decided that the road was their road, thank you very much, and they were using it as part of their route through the park. And they were, as I may have mentioned, in absolutely no hurry to move along.

Now, here is where things got quite interesting from a historical and ecological standpoint. These elephants, as our guide explained, had made their way into iSimangaliso from Mozambique, crossing via what conservationists now call the Futi Corridor — a 170,000-acre wildlife passage that follows the Futi River and links the Maputo National Park in Mozambique to the Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa. The corridor forms part of the larger Usuthu-Tembe-Futi Transfrontier Conservation Area, a cross-border conservation initiative that spans South Africa, Mozambique, and Eswatini. It is a remarkable piece of international cooperation, even if the elephants themselves are blissfully unaware of the geopolitics involved.

The key thing about these particular elephants, and the reason everyone in the vehicle was being very quiet and still, was that because they had spent most of their lives in Mozambique’s Maputo National Park — an area where human contact has historically been far less managed than in South Africa’s game reserves — they were not used to vehicles or people, and they were considerably more aggressive towards humans than the elephants you might encounter elsewhere. During the civil war in Mozambique, which ran from 1977 to 1992, elephant populations in the region were devastated by poaching and military activity. The surviving animals developed a deep wariness of humans that has been passed down through generations. So when you have a herd of traumatised, war-legacy elephants standing in the road giving you the thousand-yard stare, you do what any sensible Londoner would do. You sit very still and you wait.

After a considerable time, some of the other vehicles behind us decided to edge forward slowly, and eventually the herd moved off into the bush and we were clear to proceed. We continued north through the darkening park, and in the gathering gloom we were able to make out some of the reserve’s other residents going about their evening business along the roadside.

After about an hour and a half of driving, we reached the campground at the northern end of the road. The driver pulled over, everyone clambered out for what our guide diplomatically called a “comfort break” — which in the middle of an African game reserve at night takes on a slightly more urgent character than the phrase suggests — and then the driver did something rather brilliant. He let the air out of the tyres. All four of them. Because for the next stage of the journey, we would be driving not on a road at all, but along the beach itself, and you need low tyre pressure to handle soft sand without getting stuck. Good to know.

It was a beautifully clear night. The moon was full and enormous, hanging over the Indian Ocean, and it bathed the entire beach in that peculiar silver light that makes everything look like a black-and-white film. We could see clearly the beach stretching away ahead of us, the dark shapes of the vegetated dunes to our left, and the white surf breaking to our right. It was, genuinely, magical. That is not a word I use lightly.

For the next hour or so we drove slowly along the beach, headlights off, looking for leatherback or loggerhead sea turtles. Both species nest on these beaches, and iSimangaliso is one of the most important nesting sites in Africa for both. Loggerhead turtles have been coming to these shores for tens of thousands of years, returning to the very beach where they hatched to lay their own eggs — a navigational feat that would put most GPS systems to shame. The leatherback turtle, meanwhile, is the largest reptile on earth and can weigh up to 900 kilograms. Finding one would have been genuinely extraordinary. There was some evidence of recent visits by these beautiful creatures — tracks in the sand, disturbed areas above the tide line — but no turtles themselves were to be seen that night. These things happen. Wildlife does not perform on demand, which is one of the many reasons it is wonderful.

Eventually we arrived at the turnaround point, pulled over, and everyone got out of the vehicle. And here is where our driver earned himself several gold stars in my estimation. He produced our snacks — some sandwiches and cold beer. Out there on a moonlit beach on the Indian Ocean at midnight with cold beer in hand, I can confirm that life felt extremely good. It was now time to set off back towards St Lucia, and we kept our eyes peeled on the way back in case any turtles had emerged in the meantime.

An hour later we were back at the campground, and sadly still not a sea turtle in sight. We stopped briefly so the driver could pump the tyres back up to road pressure, and then set off south. Along the road back we had two consolation prizes from the wildlife department. First, a couple of hyenas trotting alongside the road — spotted hyenas are common in iSimangaliso and are one of the park’s more reliable nocturnal sightings. And then, amazingly, our driver spotted a tiny chameleon in a roadside tree. He pulled over, reached in, and carefully picked up the little lizard, passing it around for us all to have a look at. It sat there in various people’s hands, perfectly still and quite composed to begin with, before eventually deciding it had had quite enough of being handled by tourists and becoming rather agitated. The driver returned it to its tree with suitable ceremony.

Finally, we got back to St Lucia and were dropped off at our hotel. It was one-thirty in the morning. A very long night with no turtles. Would I do it again? Absolutely, without a moment’s hesitation.