St Lucia Game Reserve – by Nina

In the morning we got up at 4:30am, put our tents down, got in the car and drove away.

Along the way we saw a dead horse.  The thing about the horse was that its legs and neck was mauled and its stomach was ripped open.  It didn’t look like road kill, it looked like cat kill.

Once we were in the park we were all eyes.  Just a little way along the road we found a pond full of hippos.  They are amazing.  Their heads are huge.  We saw one yawn, it was a huge yawn.  Then two had a play fight, they opened their mouths and tried to bite each others necks, but their heads got in the way.  The hippos look a bit funny because their eyes, ears and nostrils are perched on the top of their heads.  Their ears, eyes and nostrils are on the top because then they can still hear, see and smell even when their bodies are completely submerged.

the pond full of hippos

we saw one yawn (but I borrowed this picture)

Most of St Lucia is made up of swamp and there’s even a big lake in the middle, so you can imagine that it is teeming with life.  In a patch of swamp we saw some buffalo.  The buffalo look weird.

buffalo look weird

In St Lucia there were lots of Red Duiker.  A Red Duiker is a small type of antelope that’s about 50cm long.  It has a red-brown coat.

Then we saw zebra.  I like the way the stripes on their necks go all the way up through their mane.

I like the way the stripes go through their mane

Then when we were going to the exit we saw a rhino on the side of the road and stopped to look at it.  Then we realized it had a big sore on its side and then it walked out onto the road and we saw it had a tracking device on a foot.  Along the road we saw some park rangers and they sped off to do something about it.

Here is a list of all the animals we saw at St Lucia:

Birds
Martial eagle
Verreaux’s eagle
Long-crested eagle
African crowned eagle
Yellow-billed kite
Goliath heron
Gray heron
Hadedah ibis
African Spoonbill
Whitebreasted cormorant
Black stork
Yellow-billed stork
Woolly-necked stork
Egyptian goose
White-faced duck
African jacana
Brown-hooded kingfisher
Blue-cheeked bee-eater
Little bee-eater
Burchells coucal
African hoppoe
Cape turtle-dove
Red-eyed dove
Speckled mousebird
Trumpeter hornbill
Magpie shrike
Pin-tailed Whydah
Cape glossy starling
Scarlet-chested sunbird
Blue waxbill
Green twinspot
Red-billed Oxpecker
Village weaver
Spectacled weaver
Southern red bishop


Mammals
Burchells zebra
buffalo
Chacma baboon
Vevet monkeys
Hippopotamus
White rhinoceros
Banded mongoose
Red Duiker
Steenbok
Suni
Waterbuck
Blue Wildebeest
Kudu

Reptiles
Nile crocodile
goanas
terapins
Leopard Tortoise

Bugs and Other
flies
dung beetles
millipedes
centipedes

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