SHAKABARKER TOURS
Wildlife Safari
in St Lucia, Zululand & Maputuland,
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Shakabarker Tours are based in St. Lucia Village and provide a safari service into the The Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park. This Park was declared as South Africa's first Natural World Heritage Site. This was done by UNESCO protocol and created the most ecologically and historically diverse Parks in Southern Africa. However not only the natural features, but home to a number of Nguni tribes. Traditionally the park has been zoned into five ecosystems, however they are so intertwined that it takes several days to understand this incredible labyrinth of nature, history and culture.
 
This park is situated on the Southern extension of the African Coastline and is warmed by the Western Indian Ocean Waters. A massive tropical current, seductively baths the sandy shore. The waters are kept unusually warm by the Agulhas current, a current seasonally driven by strong Madagascar winds. The water temperature reaches a comfortable 31 degrees Celsius. These waters are home to tropical reefs, graced by hundreds of fish species, turtles, dolphins all year and a large migratory population of whales in winter.
 
These warm tropical water tidally rise and fall onto mineral rich beaches. The mineral valued more than gold, creating  a unique 'sense of place'. And these restless sands have formed massive mineral rich dunes, guarding over the ancestral nesting grounds of the Worlds largest reptile, the leatherback turtle. The dunes are capped by a tropical forest. This forest is home to a variety of tropical frogs, insects, reptiles, birds, buck and apes. Also these forests hide secrets of Zulu explorations, trading routes, poor agricultural practises and European explorations.
 
The ancient east facing trees, watch the sun rising over the Indian Ocean and weather the salty spray. The west facing trees reach skywards in a massive jungle. A tropical paradise  filled with calling frogs, insects, birds and apes. Many roads and guided hiking trails lead visitors through this diverse three canopy forest.  This west facing forest boarders a massive coastal grassland, that reaches all the way up the east coast of Africa to Ethiopia.
 
These grasslands are home to a variety of large and small mammals, once afforested with Pine trees, the grassland is being restored to their original pristine condition. However these grasslands are a complex grid-work of water tables, which include the deepest peat swamp in the Southern hemisphere, sacred Zulu burial lakes, tannin rich freshwater streams, and acres of verdant grassland covering ancient marine deposits. These marine deposits of sand where formed as the sea retreated thousands of years ago.
 
But it is not only the large mammals that attract visitors, these sandy tropical grasslands are home to some unique reptiles and birds. And some interesting nocturnal visitors. After dark 1300 hippo emerge from Lake St. Lucia to eat tonnes of grass from the coastal plains. By day they can be seen wallowing in the warm lake waters and at night lumbering across the darkened landscape in a quest to fill their enormous herbivorous appetites. During the day they share the waters of Lake St. Lucia with over 2000 crocodiles, tens of thousands of fish, birds and invertebrates. But it is the hippo that are the driving force in the lakes ecosystem. They release tonnes of droppings into the lake. These dropping fertilize the warm tropical lake water, creating Africa's most important fish and prawn nursery ground.
 
This lake is linked to the Indian Ocean by a canal known as the Narrows and is fed by five  Rivers. Thus keeping a general salt balance in the lake's eco-system. The largest of these rivers is the Mkuze and it filters through a massive delta created at the most northern end of the lake. This area is a complex of small and large channels filtering through a variety of reed beds. All the rivers reaching into this park arise in the last of the five ecosystems - Savannah. Here the Western shores are made up of mineral-rich soils and are home to a typical Big Five ecosystem.
 
So from the Southern end of the Park, characterized by the westernised Village of St. Lucia to the northern end, characterized by Kosi Bay home to a totally fishing community with totally organic and environmentally fishing techniques, is the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park. A park filled with a microcosm of culture, ecosystems and people to create and incredible Macrocosm.

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