What to do in St Lucia

St Lucia is a settlement in Umkhanyakude District Municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The small town is mainly a hub for the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park.

Evidence of early humans living in the caves up high in the Lebombo Mountains dating back 130,000 years ago provided scientists with clues regarding the lifestyle of these prehistoric settlers. From this cave alone some 69,000 stone implements and various human remains have been recovered. Some of these tools date back to the middle and early stone ages (130,000 to 30,000 years ago).

St Lucia was first named in 1554 as Rio dos Medos do Ouro (alternatively Rio dos Médãos do Ouro — River of the Gold Dunes) by the survivors of the Portuguese ship São Bento. At this stage, only the Tugela River mouth was known as St. Lucia. Later, in 1575, the Tugela River was named Tugela. On 13 December 1575, the day of the feast of Saint Lucy, Manuel Peresterello renamed the mouth area to Santa Lucia.

In 1822, St Lucia was proclaimed by the British as a township. In 1895, St Lucia Game Reserve, 30 km north of the town, was proclaimed. Since 1971, St Lucia Lake and the turtle beaches and coral reefs of Maputaland have been listed by the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention). In December 1999, the park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.