St Lucia: Natural beauty, exciting wildlife and lovely people
St Lucia is known for its natural beauty, subtropical climate, wild animals, large trees, the Indian Ocean and lovely people. Holiday-makers flock to the small town in December, but during the rest of the year it’s just a normal town going about its busin
Why, you wonder when you drive into St Lucia on a quiet weekday in spring, would anyone ever want to leave this town beneath the canopy of tall trees? Your welcome is simply flabbergasting: you’re barely over the bridge across the lake when the grunts and bellows of a pod of hippos sound over the water and reeds and into the distance, where the sun is starting to dip towards the horizon.
Driving along the main street, it’s not long before you’re among tall trees once more, where you encounter a gang of vervet monkeys daintily picking up berries from the tarred road surface, and then… a lone bushbuck, standing near a road sign that warns of the presence of sharks, crocs and hippos, gently takes leaves on a broken branch between her lips, pulls back her ears and tugs on them.
You pass streets with names like Flamingo, Garrick, Kingfisher and Abalone, and before you know it you are stepping onto the main beach with its perfect proportions: sand, water, meringue-topped waves, clouds and a solitary oil tanker on the horizon. Ahead, a man and a woman are seated in camping chairs, holding hands, barefoot, and all they are doing is gazing at the sea. No words are spoken. Two other couples are standing a little to the right, and further along are three fishermen, keeping an eye on their floats.
Back in town, you start to meet people: a French nun who is not wearing her habit – her face lit with a broad smile and peace in her eyes; a Filipino woman with the surname Bouwer, who preserves green pawpaw and green mango; a woman who has lived in St Lucia for 65 years; a physically disabled young man who says he bugs people.
And when you walk into the Spar it’s not Afrikaans or Zulu or English you hear first, but Dutch, German and Russian.
The warm Indian Ocean waters near the town are home to whales and dolphins, leatherback and loggerhead turtles and tropical fish. The turtles lay their eggs in the sand, the same sand that, over thousands of years, has been blown by the wind into high dunes, some of the highest vegetated sand dunes in the world.
It’s like a dreamscape.
THE MAIN STREET soon brings you back to reality. Here you see not only cars and bakkies but also a number of tour buses and even a few game-viewing vehicles. And lining the street are all the things you expect to find in a coastal town: a surf shop, a bookshop, quite a few restaurants, a tourism office, a fishing tackle shop, a bottle store. There’s also a market where fruit and curios
are sold. And yes, as befits all good platteland towns, there’s a Spar, too.
But this is no ordinary Spar. Firstly, the sign outside says, “Pick ’n Save” Spar. Slightly cheeky. Inside, springbok hides (costing R650 each) are draped over a drywall and in the last aisle you will find all things related to sea and beach: fishing rods, pulleys, hooks and floats; diving masks, snorkels and fins; umbrellas, beach balls, hats, magazines… These people know how to work for their market.
Brothers Marcus and Mario Georgiou manage the shop under the eye of their father, George. Marcus, the quiet, shy one who initially goes out of his way to avoid Platteland, is a trained chiropractor and owns a camera shop, whereas Mario, the jovial one who cracks jokes and likes to chat, owns the Ocean Basket, Braza Restaurant, Kauai and a coffee shop.
“My parents came to South Africa from Cyprus in 1962,” says Marcus when we are seated at a table beside the tills. “They are hardworking people. We all know how to persevere, take one step forward at a time. Work is just how we pass the time of day.” >
“A few townspeople even believe the only thing that will rescue the situation is a severe storm, like Domoina in 1984.”
Mario, the youngest of four brothers, walks up to us with a broad smile and catches the tail end of the conversation.
“It’s really since I was born in 1975 that everything fell beautifully into place for the family.” He tells us how his father first worked for an uncle in Germiston before getting involved at the erstwhile Chris’s Supermarket in St Lucia. “But, as parents of two small children, it wasn’t a good idea for them to be in a town that didn’t have its own doctor. The road to Mtubatuba hadn’t yet been tarred and my father had to drive there every day to get milk and newspapers. It wasn’t long before they moved back to Germiston.”
By 1985, however, the Georgious had returned. George built this building, and the whole town thought he’d lost his marbles because it was way too big. “It’s amazing that the old man had the vision 30 years ago to build this huge place – back then people would joke that you needed a scooter to get from one side of the shop to the other. Today there’s hardly room for a mouse here.”
Mario’s wife, Irni, is the town’s doctor. “You know us Cypriots,” he says. “We monopolise everything. You need us for your milk and bread, your doctor, your pastor… We cover all our bases in case a recession strikes.” He laughs.
Marcus shakes his head and smiles before continuing in a more serious vein: “We grew up here and have lived here our whole lives – apart from when we studied. The natural environment is something quite incredible. You see >