Day 1. On a plane.
We left home fifteen hours ago, at half past one in the morning. There’s been torrential rain in England for the past few weeks, and I drove along half-flooded motorways to Manchester Airport in the dead of night, our flight to Amsterdam departing at 6am.
The only excitement of the journey so far was about ten minutes into that short flight: a passenger in the seats directly behind us went into a comatose state. The stewardess was trying to rouse him but he was staring open-eyed and completely unconscious. I thought he’d died at first. The pilot made an announcement, “Is there a doctor on the flight?” I thought you only ever hear that in bad films.
A woman arrived who may or may not have been a doctor, and she told the flight staff the man would have to be removed from his seat and laid out at the back of the plane. Since he was in the window seat and quite heavy I had to assist by leaning over from my seat in front with the stewardess likewise leaning over the seats behind and a couple of other passengers pulling at his legs. At first he wouldn’t budge because he still had his seat belt on. Duh! But as soon as we got him upright he seemed to revive somewhat, and was bundled to the back of the plane. The stewardess later reported he was OK.
From Amsterdam we got on this, the long flight to Cape Town. Very long flight. We have seats over the wing so there’s nothing to look at. Earlier when we made an expedition to the loos I looked out of a port-hole and I thought the ground was covered in snow, but it was the sun glaring off the sands of the horizon-wide Sahara Desert in Algeria. We could see cultivated oases - strange perfectly geometric circles of green in a vast expanse of sand - also dry river beds and gigantic dune systems. But now there’s nothing below us but cloud. Four and a half hours more to go...tum-ti-tum...
Day 2. Hotel Verde, Cape Town airport.
We arrived safely in Cape Town last night, but sadly our suitcases didn’t. They remained in Amsterdam. Hopefully by now they will be somewhere over the Mediterranean on today’s flight.
After a big kerfuffle at the airport when they failed to appear on the luggage carousel, we decided to walk to our hotel rather than wait around for the shuttle bus, since it is right next to the airport. A mistake. Although we could clearly see the hotel from the arrivals hall, it turned out to be a lot further away than it looked, and there is no pedestrian access to anywhere around here. We found ourselves walking alongside a fast 4-lane freeway and getting lost in dark wastelands and vast car-parks, every potential short-cut blocked by massive security fences.
The hotel Verde is very nice though. It’s an “Eco-hotel” with wind turbines outside and signs up everywhere saying how they recycle water etc. There’s a reed bed outside our room. A pity we’re not in the mood to appreciate it. I’ve been in the same clothes for almost 48 hours now, and I reek.
This morning we had a great buffet breakfast, but since the hotel had told us they’re full tonight we spent a panicked hour before checkout using the room-phone and hotel Wi-Fi trying to book another hotel. Everywhere in Cape Town seems to be full tonight. But just as we were checking out at 11am the receptionist told us they’d had a cancellation, so - massive relief - we can stay here tonight and KLbloodyM airline can deliver our suitcases here when or if they arrive late tonight.
We went back to the airport to pick up our hire car and buy some essentials (deodorant and sun-screen). Now we’re waiting in the hotel lobby for our new room to be ready as the afternoon ticks away, getting cross again.
We left home fifteen hours ago, at half past one in the morning. There’s been torrential rain in England for the past few weeks, and I drove along half-flooded motorways to Manchester Airport in the dead of night, our flight to Amsterdam departing at 6am.
The only excitement of the journey so far was about ten minutes into that short flight: a passenger in the seats directly behind us went into a comatose state. The stewardess was trying to rouse him but he was staring open-eyed and completely unconscious. I thought he’d died at first. The pilot made an announcement, “Is there a doctor on the flight?” I thought you only ever hear that in bad films.
A woman arrived who may or may not have been a doctor, and she told the flight staff the man would have to be removed from his seat and laid out at the back of the plane. Since he was in the window seat and quite heavy I had to assist by leaning over from my seat in front with the stewardess likewise leaning over the seats behind and a couple of other passengers pulling at his legs. At first he wouldn’t budge because he still had his seat belt on. Duh! But as soon as we got him upright he seemed to revive somewhat, and was bundled to the back of the plane. The stewardess later reported he was OK.
From Amsterdam we got on this, the long flight to Cape Town. Very long flight. We have seats over the wing so there’s nothing to look at. Earlier when we made an expedition to the loos I looked out of a port-hole and I thought the ground was covered in snow, but it was the sun glaring off the sands of the horizon-wide Sahara Desert in Algeria. We could see cultivated oases - strange perfectly geometric circles of green in a vast expanse of sand - also dry river beds and gigantic dune systems. But now there’s nothing below us but cloud. Four and a half hours more to go...tum-ti-tum...
Day 2. Hotel Verde, Cape Town airport.
We arrived safely in Cape Town last night, but sadly our suitcases didn’t. They remained in Amsterdam. Hopefully by now they will be somewhere over the Mediterranean on today’s flight.
After a big kerfuffle at the airport when they failed to appear on the luggage carousel, we decided to walk to our hotel rather than wait around for the shuttle bus, since it is right next to the airport. A mistake. Although we could clearly see the hotel from the arrivals hall, it turned out to be a lot further away than it looked, and there is no pedestrian access to anywhere around here. We found ourselves walking alongside a fast 4-lane freeway and getting lost in dark wastelands and vast car-parks, every potential short-cut blocked by massive security fences.
The hotel Verde is very nice though. It’s an “Eco-hotel” with wind turbines outside and signs up everywhere saying how they recycle water etc. There’s a reed bed outside our room. A pity we’re not in the mood to appreciate it. I’ve been in the same clothes for almost 48 hours now, and I reek.
This morning we had a great buffet breakfast, but since the hotel had told us they’re full tonight we spent a panicked hour before checkout using the room-phone and hotel Wi-Fi trying to book another hotel. Everywhere in Cape Town seems to be full tonight. But just as we were checking out at 11am the receptionist told us they’d had a cancellation, so - massive relief - we can stay here tonight and KLbloodyM airline can deliver our suitcases here when or if they arrive late tonight.
We went back to the airport to pick up our hire car and buy some essentials (deodorant and sun-screen). Now we’re waiting in the hotel lobby for our new room to be ready as the afternoon ticks away, getting cross again.
Later.
The Hotel Verde took a whole hour and a half to get our room ready, but once we were in it we resolved to make the most of what was left of the day and we drove down the motorway towards Table Mountain, and went to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. We’d been there the last time we visited Cape Town twelve years ago, and I remember it as one of the nicest places I’ve been in the whole world. Pleased to report that it still is.
There’s acres of native trees, shrubs and flowers planted tidily up a slope, overhung by the dramatic crags of the eastern flank of Table Mountain. Birds abound. Our bird book is in the missing suitcase, but we know enough to say we saw sugarbirds, two types of sunbirds, white-necked ravens, flycatchers, a cisticola, olive thrush, red-winged starling and a mongoose. A pair of guineafowl came begging for scraps at the tea room. We walked to the top of the garden into the natural fynbos scrubland of the mountain and got great views across the city.
For dinner we drove to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, a renovated dock that is the tourist’s bar and restaurant hub of Cape Town. I got blocked in the wrong lane of the motorway by an inconsiderate €#+¥*{% of a motorist and turned off too early resulting in half an hour of frustrated lostness driving the streets of downtown. There are no road signs anywhere in this city. But the V&A Waterfront was bustling with activity and a rooftop of one of the harbour buildings was covered with hundreds of roosting terns. We had a good meal at a “traditional African” restaurant. Robbie was happy because they had a vegetarian menu, but the food was a bit crap overall.
Now we sit in the hotel bar once more awaiting our bags... It’s 11.45pm. How long do we stay up in hope? I’m very tired.
Even later.
Hurrah! The bags arrived at midnight on the dot, just as I was losing hope. I’ve had a shave and got out of those revolting clothes at last. Now we can relax and enjoy this lovely country.
The Hotel Verde took a whole hour and a half to get our room ready, but once we were in it we resolved to make the most of what was left of the day and we drove down the motorway towards Table Mountain, and went to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. We’d been there the last time we visited Cape Town twelve years ago, and I remember it as one of the nicest places I’ve been in the whole world. Pleased to report that it still is.
There’s acres of native trees, shrubs and flowers planted tidily up a slope, overhung by the dramatic crags of the eastern flank of Table Mountain. Birds abound. Our bird book is in the missing suitcase, but we know enough to say we saw sugarbirds, two types of sunbirds, white-necked ravens, flycatchers, a cisticola, olive thrush, red-winged starling and a mongoose. A pair of guineafowl came begging for scraps at the tea room. We walked to the top of the garden into the natural fynbos scrubland of the mountain and got great views across the city.
For dinner we drove to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, a renovated dock that is the tourist’s bar and restaurant hub of Cape Town. I got blocked in the wrong lane of the motorway by an inconsiderate €#+¥*{% of a motorist and turned off too early resulting in half an hour of frustrated lostness driving the streets of downtown. There are no road signs anywhere in this city. But the V&A Waterfront was bustling with activity and a rooftop of one of the harbour buildings was covered with hundreds of roosting terns. We had a good meal at a “traditional African” restaurant. Robbie was happy because they had a vegetarian menu, but the food was a bit crap overall.
Now we sit in the hotel bar once more awaiting our bags... It’s 11.45pm. How long do we stay up in hope? I’m very tired.
Even later.
Hurrah! The bags arrived at midnight on the dot, just as I was losing hope. I’ve had a shave and got out of those revolting clothes at last. Now we can relax and enjoy this lovely country.
Day 3. Duinepos Chalets, West Coast Reserve.
A much, much better day than yesterday. The baggage problem having been resolved I was in the right frame of mind this morning to give the copious Hotel Verde breakfast buffet my fullest attention. Shamed to say I was fit to bust before I had sampled absolutely everything.
After checking out we had a quick explore of the hotel and its grounds, which is all fabulous. They’ve used every “green” piece of technology there is I think - solar panels, wind power, water recycling, ground source energy, optimum building design for heating/cooling efficiency... There’s notices stuck on the walls everywhere explaining it all. The concrete blocks it’s built from have air sacks inside to save on concrete and to make them lighter.
Outside is a wonderful garden that’s not quite finished yet - the gardeners were still planting it up. There’s a central reed bed which is a holding pond for the local road run-off water, and a path encircling it planted with native flowers and shrubs. They’re just completing the swimming pool which has a border of aquatic plants so that it looks like a natural pond. There’s some open-air exercise machines beside the reed bed which we had a go on, before deciding it was already too hot. The basement parking lot has been decorated by local graffiti artists with environmentally themed murals, and the lobby and all the corridors are adorned with art-works made from recycled materials.
We battled through the somewhat impolite Cape Town drivers until we were clear of the city on the N7, then turned off to the small seaside town of Melkbosstrand where we stopped at a supermarket to stock up on self-catering provisions for the next five days. A predominantly white settlement, if the customers of the supermarket were a representative sample.
From Melkbosstrand our road headed north in a dead straight line for ever, through an apparently empty landscape. Some of it was vegetated sand dunes, the rest presumably what they call Fynbos Scrub, a dry vegetation Kingdom that is unique in the world to the Cape region. (You can tell I spent yesterday afternoon in the botanical gardens, can’t you!) There is so much space in this country...to a native of an overcrowded island such as Britain it is staggering.
We reached the West Coast National Park gate a couple of hours out of Cape Town. Paid our fees and drove another 20 km or so until we reached the Duinepos Chalets where we have a booking. It is lovely. A cluster of a dozen terracotta painted flat roofed bungalows that look like a scene from a bible illustration, or perhaps a little Mexican pueblo in a spaghetti western. Our chalet is huge - massive kitchen/sitting/dining room with bathroom and two bedrooms, microwave, freezer, electric cooker and outdoor brai (that’s South African for BBQ) facilities. Only in South Africa could you get all this for a trifling £48 a night. You wonder why I love this country so?
Just before we reached Duinepos there was an ostrich beside the road. It scuttled away rapidly, but we’ve seen many, many of them today. That was the only one we were close to though. We went for a walk to the nearby visitor centre, hoping to get there before 5pm closing. Not a chance when there’s a bird of every shape and size from swallow to ostrich poking its head out of the scrubland every few yards! Should I bore you with a list of everything we saw? I’ll leave it for later...much contented is all I need say. The best sighting was not a bird but a caracal, which is a medium sized cat species, as big as a jackal, like a miniature lion. I noticed it staring at us from the scrub only a dozen or so yards away, but it scarpered as soon as I got my binocs to my eyes, and Robbie only saw its back vanishing. I saw its black tufted ears.
The visitor centre is a beautiful white-washed Cape Dutch colonial mansion, but it was closed by the time we got there. The garden was full of birds, including a very tame Rock Kestrel which sat on a window ledge right above the restaurant door regarding us impassively. Then we noticed hundreds of flamingos lined up along the shore of the nearby tidal lagoon, and we went dashing off to the bird hide.
The hide is on stilts above the lagoon, and is reached by a long serpentine boardwalk across a stunningly beautiful salt-marsh, with succulent salt tolerant plants and numerous wading birds, of which I soon gave up even trying to identify. A ferocious wind had blown up and whenever I got out the bird book I could barely keep a hold of it. I’m sure that a few of them were greenshank, certainly there were black-winged stilts and grey herons, but the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.
The hide was fairly close to the flamingos but there was such a gale blowing in through the flaps on that side that I only got a few very blurry pictures through my telescope. (I get more burdened down bird watching the older and more affluent that I get - this holiday I am carrying binoculars, telescope, tripod, iPad and two field guides wherever I go.)
Walking back, the sun was retreating and the whole landscape was bathed in a gorgeous soft amber glow. Birds popped out of every shrub, from behind every thorn twig. A herd of eland trotted up to take a look at us. Birds and animals are so tame here, and we seemed to be the only visitors. Have I died and gone to heaven?
A much, much better day than yesterday. The baggage problem having been resolved I was in the right frame of mind this morning to give the copious Hotel Verde breakfast buffet my fullest attention. Shamed to say I was fit to bust before I had sampled absolutely everything.
After checking out we had a quick explore of the hotel and its grounds, which is all fabulous. They’ve used every “green” piece of technology there is I think - solar panels, wind power, water recycling, ground source energy, optimum building design for heating/cooling efficiency... There’s notices stuck on the walls everywhere explaining it all. The concrete blocks it’s built from have air sacks inside to save on concrete and to make them lighter.
Outside is a wonderful garden that’s not quite finished yet - the gardeners were still planting it up. There’s a central reed bed which is a holding pond for the local road run-off water, and a path encircling it planted with native flowers and shrubs. They’re just completing the swimming pool which has a border of aquatic plants so that it looks like a natural pond. There’s some open-air exercise machines beside the reed bed which we had a go on, before deciding it was already too hot. The basement parking lot has been decorated by local graffiti artists with environmentally themed murals, and the lobby and all the corridors are adorned with art-works made from recycled materials.
We battled through the somewhat impolite Cape Town drivers until we were clear of the city on the N7, then turned off to the small seaside town of Melkbosstrand where we stopped at a supermarket to stock up on self-catering provisions for the next five days. A predominantly white settlement, if the customers of the supermarket were a representative sample.
From Melkbosstrand our road headed north in a dead straight line for ever, through an apparently empty landscape. Some of it was vegetated sand dunes, the rest presumably what they call Fynbos Scrub, a dry vegetation Kingdom that is unique in the world to the Cape region. (You can tell I spent yesterday afternoon in the botanical gardens, can’t you!) There is so much space in this country...to a native of an overcrowded island such as Britain it is staggering.
We reached the West Coast National Park gate a couple of hours out of Cape Town. Paid our fees and drove another 20 km or so until we reached the Duinepos Chalets where we have a booking. It is lovely. A cluster of a dozen terracotta painted flat roofed bungalows that look like a scene from a bible illustration, or perhaps a little Mexican pueblo in a spaghetti western. Our chalet is huge - massive kitchen/sitting/dining room with bathroom and two bedrooms, microwave, freezer, electric cooker and outdoor brai (that’s South African for BBQ) facilities. Only in South Africa could you get all this for a trifling £48 a night. You wonder why I love this country so?
Just before we reached Duinepos there was an ostrich beside the road. It scuttled away rapidly, but we’ve seen many, many of them today. That was the only one we were close to though. We went for a walk to the nearby visitor centre, hoping to get there before 5pm closing. Not a chance when there’s a bird of every shape and size from swallow to ostrich poking its head out of the scrubland every few yards! Should I bore you with a list of everything we saw? I’ll leave it for later...much contented is all I need say. The best sighting was not a bird but a caracal, which is a medium sized cat species, as big as a jackal, like a miniature lion. I noticed it staring at us from the scrub only a dozen or so yards away, but it scarpered as soon as I got my binocs to my eyes, and Robbie only saw its back vanishing. I saw its black tufted ears.
The visitor centre is a beautiful white-washed Cape Dutch colonial mansion, but it was closed by the time we got there. The garden was full of birds, including a very tame Rock Kestrel which sat on a window ledge right above the restaurant door regarding us impassively. Then we noticed hundreds of flamingos lined up along the shore of the nearby tidal lagoon, and we went dashing off to the bird hide.
The hide is on stilts above the lagoon, and is reached by a long serpentine boardwalk across a stunningly beautiful salt-marsh, with succulent salt tolerant plants and numerous wading birds, of which I soon gave up even trying to identify. A ferocious wind had blown up and whenever I got out the bird book I could barely keep a hold of it. I’m sure that a few of them were greenshank, certainly there were black-winged stilts and grey herons, but the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.
The hide was fairly close to the flamingos but there was such a gale blowing in through the flaps on that side that I only got a few very blurry pictures through my telescope. (I get more burdened down bird watching the older and more affluent that I get - this holiday I am carrying binoculars, telescope, tripod, iPad and two field guides wherever I go.)
Walking back, the sun was retreating and the whole landscape was bathed in a gorgeous soft amber glow. Birds popped out of every shrub, from behind every thorn twig. A herd of eland trotted up to take a look at us. Birds and animals are so tame here, and we seemed to be the only visitors. Have I died and gone to heaven?
Day 4. Duinepos Chalet.
We got up at 6am this morning and drove down the road to a bird hide before breakfast, the way that real birders are supposed to do. It was well worth it. Before we’d even got out of the chalet compound we came upon an eland wandering between the buildings. It’s a huge, bull-sized antelope with straight but twisted horns and an orange furry fringe. Just before we reached the hide we found a pair of steenbok - very small antelopes with comically big ears and short sharp horns, which turned to stare at us quizzically.
The hide was overlooking a reed-fringed waterhole, at the end of a short boardwalk. We could see the bulky forms of ostriches through the morning mist all around us. There were so many birds around that we didn’t get time to look them all up in our book before one or the other of us saw something even more exciting. There were some white-throated swallow nests inside the hide. I don’t think there were any chicks in them but the birds did fly in through the flaps several times, and they were feeding young ones who were perched just on the ledge the other side of the flaps we hadn’t opened. We could see their feet through the crack underneath. There were many water birds on the waterhole, including a few spoonbills that we could barely see at the far end, and all sorts of annoyingly unidentifiable warblers, cisticolas etc. in the reeds and surrounding scrub.
We came back to the chalet for breakfast and a short nap about 9am. Our ambition to be straight out again was foiled by the abundant bird life all around the chalet. Every time you look out of a window there is a flock of common waxbills perched around the bird-bath, or Cape Spurfowls pecking about outside the front door. Then one of the old ladies staying in the chalet next door came around to tell me the elands were right in front of her porch. Later they wandered around the site and we could watch one from our kitchen window.
Eventually we got out again and walked to the visitor centre the route we’d done yesterday. The tide was just receding so there was some mud in front of the hide on the lagoon which was alive with wading birds. Flamingos, avocet, black winged stilt, curlew, whimbrel, curlew sandpiper, little stint, ring plover, grey plover, blacksmith plover, caspian tern... and lots I’ve already forgotten!
We went to the restaurant for a very late lunch where we were mobbed by Cape weaver birds at our table. Then we walked a long dry path to another bird hide overlooking another muddy tidal inlet, but the hide was very dilapidated so we didn’t hang about there very long. We saw an African Fish Eagle on the ground a very long way away.
We wandered slowly back home to Duinepos, and a little later took a sunset walk up on to the huge sand dunes behind the complex. No movement up there other than pied crows and beetles, but the contours and textures of the dunes were fascinating, as was the vegetation, and there was a great view across the park, to the lagoon.
We got up at 6am this morning and drove down the road to a bird hide before breakfast, the way that real birders are supposed to do. It was well worth it. Before we’d even got out of the chalet compound we came upon an eland wandering between the buildings. It’s a huge, bull-sized antelope with straight but twisted horns and an orange furry fringe. Just before we reached the hide we found a pair of steenbok - very small antelopes with comically big ears and short sharp horns, which turned to stare at us quizzically.
The hide was overlooking a reed-fringed waterhole, at the end of a short boardwalk. We could see the bulky forms of ostriches through the morning mist all around us. There were so many birds around that we didn’t get time to look them all up in our book before one or the other of us saw something even more exciting. There were some white-throated swallow nests inside the hide. I don’t think there were any chicks in them but the birds did fly in through the flaps several times, and they were feeding young ones who were perched just on the ledge the other side of the flaps we hadn’t opened. We could see their feet through the crack underneath. There were many water birds on the waterhole, including a few spoonbills that we could barely see at the far end, and all sorts of annoyingly unidentifiable warblers, cisticolas etc. in the reeds and surrounding scrub.
We came back to the chalet for breakfast and a short nap about 9am. Our ambition to be straight out again was foiled by the abundant bird life all around the chalet. Every time you look out of a window there is a flock of common waxbills perched around the bird-bath, or Cape Spurfowls pecking about outside the front door. Then one of the old ladies staying in the chalet next door came around to tell me the elands were right in front of her porch. Later they wandered around the site and we could watch one from our kitchen window.
Eventually we got out again and walked to the visitor centre the route we’d done yesterday. The tide was just receding so there was some mud in front of the hide on the lagoon which was alive with wading birds. Flamingos, avocet, black winged stilt, curlew, whimbrel, curlew sandpiper, little stint, ring plover, grey plover, blacksmith plover, caspian tern... and lots I’ve already forgotten!
We went to the restaurant for a very late lunch where we were mobbed by Cape weaver birds at our table. Then we walked a long dry path to another bird hide overlooking another muddy tidal inlet, but the hide was very dilapidated so we didn’t hang about there very long. We saw an African Fish Eagle on the ground a very long way away.
We wandered slowly back home to Duinepos, and a little later took a sunset walk up on to the huge sand dunes behind the complex. No movement up there other than pied crows and beetles, but the contours and textures of the dunes were fascinating, as was the vegetation, and there was a great view across the park, to the lagoon.
Day 5. Wellbedacht Nature Reserve.
Got up early again and walked to the Visitor Centre by the usual route before breakfast. There was the expected superabundance of birds in every thicket and soaring through the sky. We saw four black-shouldered kites scrapping with one another along the line of the electric wires. The short dirt road that connects Duinepos to the metalled road is always excellent for mousebirds - small grey crested birds with long stiletto tails that move around in groups and vanish from sight as soon as they settle on a bush. There was a small herd of elands along there too, which we got quite close to.
From the VC we walked back along the road, and in the row of eucalypts lining the road (not native trees, but being the only tall trees in the park, they host a lot of bird activity) we saw our first woodpecker of the holiday, a cardinal woodpecker. We had breakfast and packed up to go. It was only when we were checking out at the reception building that we discovered the place has a small swimming pool tucked away in a hidden garden. Rather annoying not to know that. We really really must go back there some day.
We drove north through the park alongside the lagoon and stopped first at a hilltop viewpoint where you can see the whole park. The lagoon was the most intense azure colour you could imagine. Along the dirt road to the viewpoint we found a lovely Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk, a big grey raptor with scarlet bill and claws. It was flapping low from one thorn bush to another.
We had to make a second diversion from the road before leaving the park for another bird hide, and when I saw what was outside it I feared we would never get away. There was a multitude of literally thousands of terns on the beach of the lagoon. I think they were common terns, but all were a bit too far way to see their bills properly (the only sure way to tell) and I’d left my telescope in the car. There were also a dozen or so flamingos, and a host of small waders which I’ve still not quite go to grips with.
Exiting the park we drove through the sizeable village of Langebaan which is super posh, at least in the part of town where the white people live. We stopped for a few provisions at a supermarket and for petrol, then drove south back towards Cape Town and turned off for Darling. Drove through huge landscapes past many vineyards and wineries, and parked for a while in Darling to eat sandwiches. Then it was a non-stop two hours through Malmsbury, a town dominated by gigantic grain silos, then over a mountain pass and into a fertile valley heading straight for a huge wall of rock, the Groot Winterhoek mountains. We crossed through another more dramatic mountain pass where there were baboons padding about unconcernedly at the road’s edge, between the fast moving traffic and a sheer rock wall.
We were soon in Tulbagh, a colonial town nestled on a fertile plain between two mountain spurs. We continued towards the towering craggy mountains and came to Wellbedacht. Greeted by three over-friendly dogs as we got out the car at the office and met John the owner. Our cottage is up a bumpy track amid huge pine trees. It’s quite cute - all one room with most mod cons. It has a veranda you can sit out on and look across the distance towards Tulbagh, and rugged mountains back-dropping it to the rear. There’re scores of European Bee-eaters lined up along the electric wires.
We went for a long walk before dinner, up a track to a fishing pond amid native pine forest, down along a eucalypt plantation looking across an enclosure full of springbok and bontebok, then past John’s house where his three dogs befriended us. They followed us all the remainder of the walk, alongside a reservoir. We took a narrow path up through a forest of protea shrubs (sadly not in flower at the moment) and rejoined the rough road our cottage is on. John came up in a pickup truck and retrieved his missing dogs.
The evening has been spent on the veranda eating vegetable stew and supping a fine Pinotage, the trill of insects ringing in our ears from the surrounding pines.
Got up early again and walked to the Visitor Centre by the usual route before breakfast. There was the expected superabundance of birds in every thicket and soaring through the sky. We saw four black-shouldered kites scrapping with one another along the line of the electric wires. The short dirt road that connects Duinepos to the metalled road is always excellent for mousebirds - small grey crested birds with long stiletto tails that move around in groups and vanish from sight as soon as they settle on a bush. There was a small herd of elands along there too, which we got quite close to.
From the VC we walked back along the road, and in the row of eucalypts lining the road (not native trees, but being the only tall trees in the park, they host a lot of bird activity) we saw our first woodpecker of the holiday, a cardinal woodpecker. We had breakfast and packed up to go. It was only when we were checking out at the reception building that we discovered the place has a small swimming pool tucked away in a hidden garden. Rather annoying not to know that. We really really must go back there some day.
We drove north through the park alongside the lagoon and stopped first at a hilltop viewpoint where you can see the whole park. The lagoon was the most intense azure colour you could imagine. Along the dirt road to the viewpoint we found a lovely Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk, a big grey raptor with scarlet bill and claws. It was flapping low from one thorn bush to another.
We had to make a second diversion from the road before leaving the park for another bird hide, and when I saw what was outside it I feared we would never get away. There was a multitude of literally thousands of terns on the beach of the lagoon. I think they were common terns, but all were a bit too far way to see their bills properly (the only sure way to tell) and I’d left my telescope in the car. There were also a dozen or so flamingos, and a host of small waders which I’ve still not quite go to grips with.
Exiting the park we drove through the sizeable village of Langebaan which is super posh, at least in the part of town where the white people live. We stopped for a few provisions at a supermarket and for petrol, then drove south back towards Cape Town and turned off for Darling. Drove through huge landscapes past many vineyards and wineries, and parked for a while in Darling to eat sandwiches. Then it was a non-stop two hours through Malmsbury, a town dominated by gigantic grain silos, then over a mountain pass and into a fertile valley heading straight for a huge wall of rock, the Groot Winterhoek mountains. We crossed through another more dramatic mountain pass where there were baboons padding about unconcernedly at the road’s edge, between the fast moving traffic and a sheer rock wall.
We were soon in Tulbagh, a colonial town nestled on a fertile plain between two mountain spurs. We continued towards the towering craggy mountains and came to Wellbedacht. Greeted by three over-friendly dogs as we got out the car at the office and met John the owner. Our cottage is up a bumpy track amid huge pine trees. It’s quite cute - all one room with most mod cons. It has a veranda you can sit out on and look across the distance towards Tulbagh, and rugged mountains back-dropping it to the rear. There’re scores of European Bee-eaters lined up along the electric wires.
We went for a long walk before dinner, up a track to a fishing pond amid native pine forest, down along a eucalypt plantation looking across an enclosure full of springbok and bontebok, then past John’s house where his three dogs befriended us. They followed us all the remainder of the walk, alongside a reservoir. We took a narrow path up through a forest of protea shrubs (sadly not in flower at the moment) and rejoined the rough road our cottage is on. John came up in a pickup truck and retrieved his missing dogs.
The evening has been spent on the veranda eating vegetable stew and supping a fine Pinotage, the trill of insects ringing in our ears from the surrounding pines.
Day 6. Wellbedacht.
We had a well-needed lie-in this morning and a leisurely breakfast on the veranda, watching sugarbirds with their implausibly extensive tails feeding on the few remaining protea flowers that are scattered about. I could sit there all day watching small birds. There are sunbirds feeding on giant Erica (heather) shrubs, and the nearest ancient pine tree is a favourite perch for several black and white Fiscal Flycatchers. The ground is scattered with pine cones the size of hand grenades.
Part of the veranda contains a “splash pool” - something larger and deeper than a bathtub but not qualifying as a swimming pool, as it’s too small to swim in. The water is ice cold, but I jumped in it anyway since even the early morning was becoming quite hot. At about 11am we went out for a walk.
We took a trail uphill from the cottage access track through protea and Erica scrub and into ancient pine woods. It wasn’t too long before we found the property’s swimming dam, an utterly idyllic spot. It’s a big reed-fringed reservoir with weaver bird nests overhanging it and a resident reed cormorant. There’s a wooden jetty you can dive off, and a boat you can use, although it had no oars. I found a couple of branches that would do for punts, but we decided not to risk it because it was quite windy and we might get stuck against the far shore if it was too deep to punt. It was great for swimming though, the water lovely and warm.
We went back into the pine forest after our swim, walked along the wrong track for quite a way, but eventually sorted ourselves out and headed up a trail called the Cakewalk Track (I don’t know why.) It took us up the lower slopes of the mountain through protea scrub and pine forest, a magnificent view unfolding across to the town of Tulbagh, sitting on its plain between mountain ridges. Fabulous craggy peaks reared up ahead of us, and the colours of the vegetation were stunning. A yellow-billed kite was circling around overhead.
We reached the far boundary of the property, which gave on to a vineyard, then we descended again rapidly by a steep jeep track. We followed another track through a peach plantation above the swimming pond. John had told us it was OK to pick the peaches since they have already been harvested and what’s left is what the farmer didn’t want so I ate one, they looking so delicious. It was a little tart but not too bad. Just as we returned to the swimming pond a farm worker arrived on a little spraying vehicle and proceeded to spray I-don’t-know-what up and down the rows. I began to wonder if I had been wise to eat an unwashed fruit...
We had a short swim and walked back to the cottage. Later we walked down to John and Terri’s house and had a chat with them. They live in a wonderful great thatched mansion. They bought the property about 10 years ago as a dilapidated farm estate and have been busy cleaning it up, re-wilding it and developing it as a tourist retreat. What a wonderful thing to be able to do! We’re always dreaming of doing something like that in Britain, but the economics of it just wouldn’t work (also we don’t have the money to get started...nor the courage).
We sat out on the veranda eating and drinking as the sun went down, then took another walk down to the owners’ place to sit in their garden in the dark and use their Wi-Fi on my iPad. It looks like the stupid app I was intending to post this blog onto as I went along does not work at all. Grrr. Walking by torchlight we found a scorpion on the track not far from the cottage. Now I’m out on the veranda again, the ringing of night insects in my ears and the smell of pine in my nostrils.
We had a well-needed lie-in this morning and a leisurely breakfast on the veranda, watching sugarbirds with their implausibly extensive tails feeding on the few remaining protea flowers that are scattered about. I could sit there all day watching small birds. There are sunbirds feeding on giant Erica (heather) shrubs, and the nearest ancient pine tree is a favourite perch for several black and white Fiscal Flycatchers. The ground is scattered with pine cones the size of hand grenades.
Part of the veranda contains a “splash pool” - something larger and deeper than a bathtub but not qualifying as a swimming pool, as it’s too small to swim in. The water is ice cold, but I jumped in it anyway since even the early morning was becoming quite hot. At about 11am we went out for a walk.
We took a trail uphill from the cottage access track through protea and Erica scrub and into ancient pine woods. It wasn’t too long before we found the property’s swimming dam, an utterly idyllic spot. It’s a big reed-fringed reservoir with weaver bird nests overhanging it and a resident reed cormorant. There’s a wooden jetty you can dive off, and a boat you can use, although it had no oars. I found a couple of branches that would do for punts, but we decided not to risk it because it was quite windy and we might get stuck against the far shore if it was too deep to punt. It was great for swimming though, the water lovely and warm.
We went back into the pine forest after our swim, walked along the wrong track for quite a way, but eventually sorted ourselves out and headed up a trail called the Cakewalk Track (I don’t know why.) It took us up the lower slopes of the mountain through protea scrub and pine forest, a magnificent view unfolding across to the town of Tulbagh, sitting on its plain between mountain ridges. Fabulous craggy peaks reared up ahead of us, and the colours of the vegetation were stunning. A yellow-billed kite was circling around overhead.
We reached the far boundary of the property, which gave on to a vineyard, then we descended again rapidly by a steep jeep track. We followed another track through a peach plantation above the swimming pond. John had told us it was OK to pick the peaches since they have already been harvested and what’s left is what the farmer didn’t want so I ate one, they looking so delicious. It was a little tart but not too bad. Just as we returned to the swimming pond a farm worker arrived on a little spraying vehicle and proceeded to spray I-don’t-know-what up and down the rows. I began to wonder if I had been wise to eat an unwashed fruit...
We had a short swim and walked back to the cottage. Later we walked down to John and Terri’s house and had a chat with them. They live in a wonderful great thatched mansion. They bought the property about 10 years ago as a dilapidated farm estate and have been busy cleaning it up, re-wilding it and developing it as a tourist retreat. What a wonderful thing to be able to do! We’re always dreaming of doing something like that in Britain, but the economics of it just wouldn’t work (also we don’t have the money to get started...nor the courage).
We sat out on the veranda eating and drinking as the sun went down, then took another walk down to the owners’ place to sit in their garden in the dark and use their Wi-Fi on my iPad. It looks like the stupid app I was intending to post this blog onto as I went along does not work at all. Grrr. Walking by torchlight we found a scorpion on the track not far from the cottage. Now I’m out on the veranda again, the ringing of night insects in my ears and the smell of pine in my nostrils.
Day 7. Wellbedacht.
This morning we walked again around the footpath circuit below the cottages. I don’t remember seeing any new birds except for a female paradise flycatcher in a pine tree on the way back.
We drove into the town of Tulbagh for lunch. Stopped first for a look around a winery, but there was not much to see except a darter bird - a long-necked cormorant - on a pond. Tulbagh has an ever-so quaint historic street, Church Street, lined its whole length with old Cape Dutch buildings, thatched and whitewashed with ornate gable ends. We had a salad lunch in a restaurant in one of them. There was a noisy school sports day going on at an athletics ground across the road.
After eating we explored the town, the interesting part of which is only two streets. We went in an art gallery/museum that was the former home of a famous South African avant-garde artist called Cristo Coetzee. An interesting place although I am no great fan of the avant-garde. I didn’t mind a few of his pictures. They’ve preserved the floor of his studio as an artwork. It’s covered in random paint splashes because he did many of his paintings with the canvases laid out on the floor. That says it all about avant-garde really!
We drove back to Wellbedacht and went for a swim in the pond to freshen up. I did a full circuit. Back to the cottage for dinner.
This morning we walked again around the footpath circuit below the cottages. I don’t remember seeing any new birds except for a female paradise flycatcher in a pine tree on the way back.
We drove into the town of Tulbagh for lunch. Stopped first for a look around a winery, but there was not much to see except a darter bird - a long-necked cormorant - on a pond. Tulbagh has an ever-so quaint historic street, Church Street, lined its whole length with old Cape Dutch buildings, thatched and whitewashed with ornate gable ends. We had a salad lunch in a restaurant in one of them. There was a noisy school sports day going on at an athletics ground across the road.
After eating we explored the town, the interesting part of which is only two streets. We went in an art gallery/museum that was the former home of a famous South African avant-garde artist called Cristo Coetzee. An interesting place although I am no great fan of the avant-garde. I didn’t mind a few of his pictures. They’ve preserved the floor of his studio as an artwork. It’s covered in random paint splashes because he did many of his paintings with the canvases laid out on the floor. That says it all about avant-garde really!
We drove back to Wellbedacht and went for a swim in the pond to freshen up. I did a full circuit. Back to the cottage for dinner.
Day 8. Swellendam.
We packed up at leisure this morning, enjoying breakfast on the veranda of our little woodland cottage watching the birds in the trees and on the shrubs, the sunshine rising from a warm titillation to a blast of raw heat. We drove away from Wellbedacht at about 11am, feeling quite melancholy to be leaving the place, waving goodbye to the tame zebra who lives in a paddock by the gate. That’s the trouble with staying in nice places...
We drove through Tulbagh town without stopping and headed off eastwards. Motoring along endless straight line highways over plains full of vineyards beside great rocky mountain walls. Wolseley was the first town we passed through - similar to Tulbagh but smaller and less quaint. Then we crossed the N1 motorway and went through the town of Worcester, and we were out into a wilderness that went on for miles and miles. We saw a few ostriches but otherwise the vast hillsides appeared lifeless.
Descending towards Robertson some vineyards reappeared, and we stopped for a break in the town. It follows the usual pre-apartheid town plan of a refined grid system of leafy avenues lined with gleaming white houses protected by security fences and armed response teams, and an extensive slum of little tin box houses on the outskirts where most of the black people still live. The town was dominated by a huge industrial winery complex. We ate our sandwiches sitting under the shade of a spreading ancient gum tree in a small park opposite a magnificent white church that looked too perfect to be real.
More miles of emptiness until Ashton, a smaller version of Robertson, and then we drove through a mountain pass and descended onto Swellendam. Our B&B is called Marula Lodge, and it’s on the main road a block away from where we stayed the first time we visited Swellendam twelve years ago. We were welcomed and shown around by a young black maid, and later met the Afrikaner owners, Filip and Marion. It’s a lovely place, all spotlessly clean with quite a few rooms and some chalets in the garden, and a pool.
Most of the other guests are elderly couples though, and it feels a bit like an old-people’s home, so we drove off to the Marmoth Nature Reserve as soon as we could and walked up a steep footpath to a secluded waterfall in a wooded kloof. We saw a pair of olive woodpeckers up there, and had our heads drilled by hundreds of shrill cicadas. We did a long walk through Marmoth the first time we visited South Africa, but since then they have had a huge forest fire. The vegetation is recolonizing rapidly in the burnt areas.
We drove back to Marula Lodge and had a quick dip in the pool to cool off, but I find it somewhat intimidating swimming with all the other guests sitting around the pool area watching us. We’ve got accustomed to our solitude. We had dinner at De Vagabond restaurant, where I had a 500 gram steak for about £8. I shouldn’t need to eat again for about a week...
We packed up at leisure this morning, enjoying breakfast on the veranda of our little woodland cottage watching the birds in the trees and on the shrubs, the sunshine rising from a warm titillation to a blast of raw heat. We drove away from Wellbedacht at about 11am, feeling quite melancholy to be leaving the place, waving goodbye to the tame zebra who lives in a paddock by the gate. That’s the trouble with staying in nice places...
We drove through Tulbagh town without stopping and headed off eastwards. Motoring along endless straight line highways over plains full of vineyards beside great rocky mountain walls. Wolseley was the first town we passed through - similar to Tulbagh but smaller and less quaint. Then we crossed the N1 motorway and went through the town of Worcester, and we were out into a wilderness that went on for miles and miles. We saw a few ostriches but otherwise the vast hillsides appeared lifeless.
Descending towards Robertson some vineyards reappeared, and we stopped for a break in the town. It follows the usual pre-apartheid town plan of a refined grid system of leafy avenues lined with gleaming white houses protected by security fences and armed response teams, and an extensive slum of little tin box houses on the outskirts where most of the black people still live. The town was dominated by a huge industrial winery complex. We ate our sandwiches sitting under the shade of a spreading ancient gum tree in a small park opposite a magnificent white church that looked too perfect to be real.
More miles of emptiness until Ashton, a smaller version of Robertson, and then we drove through a mountain pass and descended onto Swellendam. Our B&B is called Marula Lodge, and it’s on the main road a block away from where we stayed the first time we visited Swellendam twelve years ago. We were welcomed and shown around by a young black maid, and later met the Afrikaner owners, Filip and Marion. It’s a lovely place, all spotlessly clean with quite a few rooms and some chalets in the garden, and a pool.
Most of the other guests are elderly couples though, and it feels a bit like an old-people’s home, so we drove off to the Marmoth Nature Reserve as soon as we could and walked up a steep footpath to a secluded waterfall in a wooded kloof. We saw a pair of olive woodpeckers up there, and had our heads drilled by hundreds of shrill cicadas. We did a long walk through Marmoth the first time we visited South Africa, but since then they have had a huge forest fire. The vegetation is recolonizing rapidly in the burnt areas.
We drove back to Marula Lodge and had a quick dip in the pool to cool off, but I find it somewhat intimidating swimming with all the other guests sitting around the pool area watching us. We’ve got accustomed to our solitude. We had dinner at De Vagabond restaurant, where I had a 500 gram steak for about £8. I shouldn’t need to eat again for about a week...
Day 9. Marula Lodge, Swellendam.
We ate a hearty breakfast this morning, on the terrace by the pool at Marula Lodge. Trouble is we’re just not used to sharing our lives with other people after a week of living out in the wilderness. It’s like a convention of the EU on the terrace here - there’s Germans, Dutch, French, Brits...
So we scooted off to Bontebok National Park as quickly as we could. It’s just the other side of the N2 motorway from Swellendam town. But I’d driven a couple of kilometres down a gravelly road towards the entrance gate before I gave the dashboard a long hard look, and I started to have misgivings about the position of the fuel gauge needle. I hadn’t considered how big the park is, nor that we’d have to drive around it all in second gear due to the state of the dirt roads. So I had to do a U-turn and drive back into town to fill up. The result was that we didn’t get into the park proper until about 11am, when the animals are already beginning to hide from the heat.
But we were happy that on the second approach to the park gate, we spotted a group of Blue Cranes in a pasture beside the road. Big, lanky but graceful birds which are closer to blue in colour than grey. There were a few springbok along there too, and once we were inside the park we started seeing Bontebok, the large brown and very rare antelopes for whose benefit the park was first designated.
We stopped at a viewpoint on top of a hill that gave us a view of most of the park. There were four Cape Zebra below us, a long way off but we have good binoculars. One of them was a small foal. They were taking turns to roll around on their backs in a dust bath, sending up great clouds of dust into the clear blue sky. We also saw plenty of Bontebok and a few Grysbok.
We continued along the gravel road to the river, where we undertook a very hot and gruelling walk through scrub at the riverside. Absolutely no birds on the river itself, but there was a lot of activity from mostly invisible small birds in the undergrowth. We flushed a large owl at one point, and an olive woodpecker was another highlight. But by God was it hot! We returned to the car park totally spent and dehydrated having walked less than 3 miles.
We returned to the gate by way of a longer track, and were rewarded with a sighting of a secretary bird, one of the species we’ve been hoping to see. We didn’t find one last year. It’s a huge thing that looks like an eagle in flight but has long stork-like legs on the ground. It flew in low over the ground and alighted near to a bontebok, then ran along with its wings extended like a tight-rope walker. Then it flew on a little further and appeared to be chasing something on the ground, again with its huge wings extended.
We had a quick dip in the pool when we returned, then we went to another restaurant nearby, where I had my second steak in two days. When in Rome...
We ate a hearty breakfast this morning, on the terrace by the pool at Marula Lodge. Trouble is we’re just not used to sharing our lives with other people after a week of living out in the wilderness. It’s like a convention of the EU on the terrace here - there’s Germans, Dutch, French, Brits...
So we scooted off to Bontebok National Park as quickly as we could. It’s just the other side of the N2 motorway from Swellendam town. But I’d driven a couple of kilometres down a gravelly road towards the entrance gate before I gave the dashboard a long hard look, and I started to have misgivings about the position of the fuel gauge needle. I hadn’t considered how big the park is, nor that we’d have to drive around it all in second gear due to the state of the dirt roads. So I had to do a U-turn and drive back into town to fill up. The result was that we didn’t get into the park proper until about 11am, when the animals are already beginning to hide from the heat.
But we were happy that on the second approach to the park gate, we spotted a group of Blue Cranes in a pasture beside the road. Big, lanky but graceful birds which are closer to blue in colour than grey. There were a few springbok along there too, and once we were inside the park we started seeing Bontebok, the large brown and very rare antelopes for whose benefit the park was first designated.
We stopped at a viewpoint on top of a hill that gave us a view of most of the park. There were four Cape Zebra below us, a long way off but we have good binoculars. One of them was a small foal. They were taking turns to roll around on their backs in a dust bath, sending up great clouds of dust into the clear blue sky. We also saw plenty of Bontebok and a few Grysbok.
We continued along the gravel road to the river, where we undertook a very hot and gruelling walk through scrub at the riverside. Absolutely no birds on the river itself, but there was a lot of activity from mostly invisible small birds in the undergrowth. We flushed a large owl at one point, and an olive woodpecker was another highlight. But by God was it hot! We returned to the car park totally spent and dehydrated having walked less than 3 miles.
We returned to the gate by way of a longer track, and were rewarded with a sighting of a secretary bird, one of the species we’ve been hoping to see. We didn’t find one last year. It’s a huge thing that looks like an eagle in flight but has long stork-like legs on the ground. It flew in low over the ground and alighted near to a bontebok, then ran along with its wings extended like a tight-rope walker. Then it flew on a little further and appeared to be chasing something on the ground, again with its huge wings extended.
We had a quick dip in the pool when we returned, then we went to another restaurant nearby, where I had my second steak in two days. When in Rome...
Day 10. Wilderness.
We left Marula Lodge straight after breakfast this morning and got in a few self-catering provisions at a Spar supermarket down the road. Then we drove through the old part of Swellendam, which is all old Dutch houses, and onto the N2 heading east. There’s always a bloke busking jazz saxophone outside the entrance to the Swellendam Museum.
The scenery was a vast landscape of rolling hills covered with brown stubble fields, looking like they’ve recently been harvested. The quantities of grain that this region must produce is mind-boggling. We drove for about two and a half hours non-stop, always with a line of craggy mountains to our left. Bypassed the sizeable towns of Mossel Bay and George on a motorway with a good surface and very. The roads here are just so much better than in Kwazulu-Natal last year.
Past George the road was soon plunging into a deep wooded canyon, and then we saw a long beach pounded by heavy waves and we were passing the mouth of the Touw River and the little town centre of Wilderness. I completely missed the discrete turn-off we wanted for our cottage and was heading out of town on the motorway unable to turn around, losing about 15 minutes. Wilderness is mainly a string of homes of the very wealthiest South Africans, lined up for several miles on a steep ridge between the N2 and the sea.
Our cottage is near the end of a long narrow lane that drops steeply from the motorway towards a huge reedbed beside the meandering Touw River. It’s called “Just for 2” and is just that - a luxurious single room wood cabin built up on the side of the steep incline, with big windows, a veranda with magenta Bougainvillaea coating the balustrade and magnificent views over the reedbed to the steep wooded slope opposite. The cottage is so spotlessly clean it looks brand new.
We were met by the Belgian owner Greta, who lives with her husband Roger in a lovely three story house next door, draped in vines and Bougainvillaea. The day had become so scoldingly hot that I could do nothing but flake out on the bed and sleep for nearly an hour. At length we roused ourselves and went for a walk.
We followed a trail strimmed through flower-full meadows over the floodplain of the meandering Touw, steep wooded hillside on either side. It would have been idyllic if you couldn’t hear the noise of the motorway all the time. We briefly saw a bushbuck, and I put my foot down a mole-rat burrow as the ground collapsed underneath me. All the usual small birds - prinias, cisticolas, weavers, fiscal flycatchers, mousebirds etc. - and eventually we saw a pied kingfisher beside the river.
We walked as far as the Eden Adventures office where they do canoe hire, but it was closed by the time we had ambled thus far. So we wandered back again. Saw two more bushbuck regarding us thoughtfully when we returned to the lane, and also a brown-hooded kingfisher in somebody’s garden. They have gardens to die for along this street!
Cooked our own dinner and ate it by candlelight out on the veranda listening to cicadas and frogs, watching the myriad varieties of insect clustering around our veranda lights. There was a little white frog clutching the wall beneath the light, flicking out its tongue at the midges occasionally. It was still there this morning. Perhaps it never moves from its spot?
We left Marula Lodge straight after breakfast this morning and got in a few self-catering provisions at a Spar supermarket down the road. Then we drove through the old part of Swellendam, which is all old Dutch houses, and onto the N2 heading east. There’s always a bloke busking jazz saxophone outside the entrance to the Swellendam Museum.
The scenery was a vast landscape of rolling hills covered with brown stubble fields, looking like they’ve recently been harvested. The quantities of grain that this region must produce is mind-boggling. We drove for about two and a half hours non-stop, always with a line of craggy mountains to our left. Bypassed the sizeable towns of Mossel Bay and George on a motorway with a good surface and very. The roads here are just so much better than in Kwazulu-Natal last year.
Past George the road was soon plunging into a deep wooded canyon, and then we saw a long beach pounded by heavy waves and we were passing the mouth of the Touw River and the little town centre of Wilderness. I completely missed the discrete turn-off we wanted for our cottage and was heading out of town on the motorway unable to turn around, losing about 15 minutes. Wilderness is mainly a string of homes of the very wealthiest South Africans, lined up for several miles on a steep ridge between the N2 and the sea.
Our cottage is near the end of a long narrow lane that drops steeply from the motorway towards a huge reedbed beside the meandering Touw River. It’s called “Just for 2” and is just that - a luxurious single room wood cabin built up on the side of the steep incline, with big windows, a veranda with magenta Bougainvillaea coating the balustrade and magnificent views over the reedbed to the steep wooded slope opposite. The cottage is so spotlessly clean it looks brand new.
We were met by the Belgian owner Greta, who lives with her husband Roger in a lovely three story house next door, draped in vines and Bougainvillaea. The day had become so scoldingly hot that I could do nothing but flake out on the bed and sleep for nearly an hour. At length we roused ourselves and went for a walk.
We followed a trail strimmed through flower-full meadows over the floodplain of the meandering Touw, steep wooded hillside on either side. It would have been idyllic if you couldn’t hear the noise of the motorway all the time. We briefly saw a bushbuck, and I put my foot down a mole-rat burrow as the ground collapsed underneath me. All the usual small birds - prinias, cisticolas, weavers, fiscal flycatchers, mousebirds etc. - and eventually we saw a pied kingfisher beside the river.
We walked as far as the Eden Adventures office where they do canoe hire, but it was closed by the time we had ambled thus far. So we wandered back again. Saw two more bushbuck regarding us thoughtfully when we returned to the lane, and also a brown-hooded kingfisher in somebody’s garden. They have gardens to die for along this street!
Cooked our own dinner and ate it by candlelight out on the veranda listening to cicadas and frogs, watching the myriad varieties of insect clustering around our veranda lights. There was a little white frog clutching the wall beneath the light, flicking out its tongue at the midges occasionally. It was still there this morning. Perhaps it never moves from its spot?
Day11. Wilderness.
We had an early alarm for this morning, and as soon as we looked out onto the reedbed there was an African Fish-eagle sitting on a post beside the river, a long way off but unmistakable with a snow white head and neck above a chestnut body. We set out to walk the “Pied Kingfisher Trail” in the early part of the day before it got too hot. The trail guide leaflet says it should take 3-4 hours, but it took us from 8am to 3.30pm. It’s only six miles but it felt like twenty, despite it all being along the flat. We saw some great birds though.
The first part was the route we took yesterday, but then we struck off eastwards through the reedbed. We emerged onto a dusty road on the far side of the river plain along the bottom of the forested slope, and almost immediately I saw a Knysna Lourie dashing across a space between trees. This is probably the most exotic looking bird that South Africa has to offer, and it’s almost unique to this area. In flight you see just a large, raven-sized bird with an iridescent green body and long, vivid scarlet wings. It powers from tree to tree silently - blink and you’ll miss it. Robbie missed the first two I saw, and it was looking as if I would be in trouble, but then we both saw all the others...
Further along the road we found three more Knysna Louries feeding in a fruit-laden tree right beside the road, and although they are very good at hiding from you in the foliage, we did get a few excellent views. They have a long pointed green crest edged with white, bright red bill and eye-ring, and very sharply defined white stripes above and below the eye. (Google it if you can’t imagine it!) Once we’d connected the bird to its repetitive frog-like croaking call, we realised the forest is full of them.
We continued on along the dusty road to the Ebb and Flow campsite and crossed the river by a bridge where a steam train used to run along a preservation line, but sadly no more. Then we passed the Fairy Knowe Backpackers where we’d stayed the first time we came to Wilderness in 2002, the best backpackers’ hostel I’ve stayed in, in all the world. We walked along leafy residential streets lined with impossibly luxurious villas, along the side of the reed-fringed river, and eventually got to the “town” - more of a village really. About 11am now, roasting hot, and I was very hungry so we had a fried breakfast at an Italian restaurant in the village centre and rested for an hour.
Then when it was really, really hot, we went down under a motorway bridge to the beach and waded the mouth of the river. There were a group of black oystercatchers on the shoreline beside the river mouth - all black dumpy wading birds with long straight bright red bills. We took off our boots and walked along the waterline barefoot. There were huge waves which occasionally rushed up the steeply sloping shore and gave us a soaking. We had to watch out for stranded jellyfish, and we found some strange molluscs with a huge flappy flat foot protruding from their shells, which were crawling over and burrowing into the soft sand at the water’s edge.
I don’t like beaches. Alien and inhospitable environments with no shade and no fresh water, offering nothing but blinding glare and rasping sand that penetrates every crevice of one’s body. We had much trouble locating the path off the beach because most of it was backed by luxurious houses built on top of the sand dune escarpment, but we climbed up a foot-blisteringly hot dune and dashed across the motorway to get back onto the quiet green lane towards the Eden Adventures office. We returned via last night’s route.
I sat out on the veranda a couple of hours waiting for the cool to arrive. A sly Siamese cat with pale blue eyes crept up the wooden staircase to the cottage and pestered us for an hour or so looking cute and trying to sneak into the room whenever we weren’t watching. I don’t trust cats. I believe I saw either a Pallid or Montague’s Harrier female settling into the reedbed, because it had a white rump. Whichever it was our bird guide lists it as uncommon, near-threatened and not quite supposed to be in this area.
It clouded over and there were a few spots of rain. Hurrah! I thought, and we got in the car and drove a long way down a bumpy dust road to a bird hide on a local lake called Langvlei. As is usual for bird hides in this country it was approached by a sinuous boardwalk through a reedbed. They just love their boardwalks here. There were a pair of black-winged stilts right outside the shutters, and a black crake building a nest in the reeds just beneath us. Lots of the unfortunately-named Red-knobbed coots, and the first purple swamp-hen we’ve seen.
It had been raining a little as we drove there, and it became dark very quickly, so we hastened back to the cottage for a lentil curry out on the veranda, and a scrummy bottle of Beyerskloof Pinotage we’d got from a supermarket for about three quid. How I love this country!
We had an early alarm for this morning, and as soon as we looked out onto the reedbed there was an African Fish-eagle sitting on a post beside the river, a long way off but unmistakable with a snow white head and neck above a chestnut body. We set out to walk the “Pied Kingfisher Trail” in the early part of the day before it got too hot. The trail guide leaflet says it should take 3-4 hours, but it took us from 8am to 3.30pm. It’s only six miles but it felt like twenty, despite it all being along the flat. We saw some great birds though.
The first part was the route we took yesterday, but then we struck off eastwards through the reedbed. We emerged onto a dusty road on the far side of the river plain along the bottom of the forested slope, and almost immediately I saw a Knysna Lourie dashing across a space between trees. This is probably the most exotic looking bird that South Africa has to offer, and it’s almost unique to this area. In flight you see just a large, raven-sized bird with an iridescent green body and long, vivid scarlet wings. It powers from tree to tree silently - blink and you’ll miss it. Robbie missed the first two I saw, and it was looking as if I would be in trouble, but then we both saw all the others...
Further along the road we found three more Knysna Louries feeding in a fruit-laden tree right beside the road, and although they are very good at hiding from you in the foliage, we did get a few excellent views. They have a long pointed green crest edged with white, bright red bill and eye-ring, and very sharply defined white stripes above and below the eye. (Google it if you can’t imagine it!) Once we’d connected the bird to its repetitive frog-like croaking call, we realised the forest is full of them.
We continued on along the dusty road to the Ebb and Flow campsite and crossed the river by a bridge where a steam train used to run along a preservation line, but sadly no more. Then we passed the Fairy Knowe Backpackers where we’d stayed the first time we came to Wilderness in 2002, the best backpackers’ hostel I’ve stayed in, in all the world. We walked along leafy residential streets lined with impossibly luxurious villas, along the side of the reed-fringed river, and eventually got to the “town” - more of a village really. About 11am now, roasting hot, and I was very hungry so we had a fried breakfast at an Italian restaurant in the village centre and rested for an hour.
Then when it was really, really hot, we went down under a motorway bridge to the beach and waded the mouth of the river. There were a group of black oystercatchers on the shoreline beside the river mouth - all black dumpy wading birds with long straight bright red bills. We took off our boots and walked along the waterline barefoot. There were huge waves which occasionally rushed up the steeply sloping shore and gave us a soaking. We had to watch out for stranded jellyfish, and we found some strange molluscs with a huge flappy flat foot protruding from their shells, which were crawling over and burrowing into the soft sand at the water’s edge.
I don’t like beaches. Alien and inhospitable environments with no shade and no fresh water, offering nothing but blinding glare and rasping sand that penetrates every crevice of one’s body. We had much trouble locating the path off the beach because most of it was backed by luxurious houses built on top of the sand dune escarpment, but we climbed up a foot-blisteringly hot dune and dashed across the motorway to get back onto the quiet green lane towards the Eden Adventures office. We returned via last night’s route.
I sat out on the veranda a couple of hours waiting for the cool to arrive. A sly Siamese cat with pale blue eyes crept up the wooden staircase to the cottage and pestered us for an hour or so looking cute and trying to sneak into the room whenever we weren’t watching. I don’t trust cats. I believe I saw either a Pallid or Montague’s Harrier female settling into the reedbed, because it had a white rump. Whichever it was our bird guide lists it as uncommon, near-threatened and not quite supposed to be in this area.
It clouded over and there were a few spots of rain. Hurrah! I thought, and we got in the car and drove a long way down a bumpy dust road to a bird hide on a local lake called Langvlei. As is usual for bird hides in this country it was approached by a sinuous boardwalk through a reedbed. They just love their boardwalks here. There were a pair of black-winged stilts right outside the shutters, and a black crake building a nest in the reeds just beneath us. Lots of the unfortunately-named Red-knobbed coots, and the first purple swamp-hen we’ve seen.
It had been raining a little as we drove there, and it became dark very quickly, so we hastened back to the cottage for a lentil curry out on the veranda, and a scrummy bottle of Beyerskloof Pinotage we’d got from a supermarket for about three quid. How I love this country!
Day 12. Wilderness.
It’s been rainy all day today. Not absolutely pouring, and warm enough to walk around in, but enough to be quite annoying. We left the cottage this morning both in a bit of a muddled state, and I wore shorts for some reason and only took the less concentrated of our insect two repellents with me, the result being that every woodland mosquito in the Knysna region has gorged itself on my legs.
First we drove down to Eden Adventures to book a canoe for tomorrow. We got stung for a hefty 100 Rand each park fees at the park gate. There hasn’t been anybody at any of the gates up until now so we’d gotten away with it. On a telephone pole next to the canoe office there was a lovely great Jackal Buzzard sitting preening himself, and we saw a magnificent Purple Heron glide down into the riverside reeds.
We drove along the dusty road where we’d seen the Louries yesterday morning, and saw another one sailing across the road. Then we started walking the “Brown Hooded Kingfisher Trail”, a path up a wooded gorge to a waterfall. For the first part of the walk there were Louries everywhere. The first time we visited Wilderness in 2012 we’d caught a fleeting glimpse of one of them in flight and had thought we’d been really lucky, but now I’m thinking we were unlucky to have seen only the one. They are very common in the right habitat.
We had to say “Hello!” to about 50 elderly Afrikaners coming back down the trail with walking sticks, all wearing turquoise T-shirts with their names on them. They’d been up to the waterfall and back already by 10.30am, and made us feel quite inadequate. It was a great path through dense mature forest with huge canyon walls towering above, creepers hanging down festooned with tufts of lichen. There were a lot of gigantic non-native eucalypt trees which at some time in the past, park staff had killed by ring-barking them so that now the leafless and limbless trunks soared into the sky starkly. I started to wonder how many of the pretty flowers we were seeing on the ground were actually invasive aliens too.
The waterfall itself when we attained it was something of an anti-climax since there was very little water in the river. Just a narrow spout of water sluicing down a shute into an inky pool, but while we were there we did briefly see a giant kingfisher hurl itself from an overhanging tree and execute an aerial U-turn before vanishing once more into the foliage. Another of the birds we’d really hoped to see this holiday. Coming back down the path it was raining more heavily, and tiny brown frogs were leaping like fleas from under our feet. We also came across a few small land crabs on the path.
When we got back down to the car we ate sandwiches and then drove up a long steep and winding road to the village of Hoekwil. We had a coffee at a village store-cum-cafe frequented by earthy red-neck farming types in rusty old station wagons, a completely different sort of white South African to those we have met so far in Wilderness and Swellendam. Then we continued along the road to the “Woodville Big Tree Circular Walk”.
It was as the name says. There was a big tree - a very big tree - an 8 century old Yellow-wood whose great venerable branches craned out high above the rest of the canopy. A host of small birds played amongst its upper leaves, giving us sore necks trying to work out what they all were. We walked around the circular walk which was only a couple of kilometres but it was rather dark due to the rain and I got eaten alive by the mosquitoes. It was lovely forest though - plenty of mature native trees, and we saw a whole party of Green Wood Hoopoes, big black woodland birds with curled red bills reminiscent of choughs.
We stopped off in Wilderness town centre on the way back to book a table for a Valentine/my birthday meal, then back to the cottage to dry out our boots and nurse our bites.
It’s been rainy all day today. Not absolutely pouring, and warm enough to walk around in, but enough to be quite annoying. We left the cottage this morning both in a bit of a muddled state, and I wore shorts for some reason and only took the less concentrated of our insect two repellents with me, the result being that every woodland mosquito in the Knysna region has gorged itself on my legs.
First we drove down to Eden Adventures to book a canoe for tomorrow. We got stung for a hefty 100 Rand each park fees at the park gate. There hasn’t been anybody at any of the gates up until now so we’d gotten away with it. On a telephone pole next to the canoe office there was a lovely great Jackal Buzzard sitting preening himself, and we saw a magnificent Purple Heron glide down into the riverside reeds.
We drove along the dusty road where we’d seen the Louries yesterday morning, and saw another one sailing across the road. Then we started walking the “Brown Hooded Kingfisher Trail”, a path up a wooded gorge to a waterfall. For the first part of the walk there were Louries everywhere. The first time we visited Wilderness in 2012 we’d caught a fleeting glimpse of one of them in flight and had thought we’d been really lucky, but now I’m thinking we were unlucky to have seen only the one. They are very common in the right habitat.
We had to say “Hello!” to about 50 elderly Afrikaners coming back down the trail with walking sticks, all wearing turquoise T-shirts with their names on them. They’d been up to the waterfall and back already by 10.30am, and made us feel quite inadequate. It was a great path through dense mature forest with huge canyon walls towering above, creepers hanging down festooned with tufts of lichen. There were a lot of gigantic non-native eucalypt trees which at some time in the past, park staff had killed by ring-barking them so that now the leafless and limbless trunks soared into the sky starkly. I started to wonder how many of the pretty flowers we were seeing on the ground were actually invasive aliens too.
The waterfall itself when we attained it was something of an anti-climax since there was very little water in the river. Just a narrow spout of water sluicing down a shute into an inky pool, but while we were there we did briefly see a giant kingfisher hurl itself from an overhanging tree and execute an aerial U-turn before vanishing once more into the foliage. Another of the birds we’d really hoped to see this holiday. Coming back down the path it was raining more heavily, and tiny brown frogs were leaping like fleas from under our feet. We also came across a few small land crabs on the path.
When we got back down to the car we ate sandwiches and then drove up a long steep and winding road to the village of Hoekwil. We had a coffee at a village store-cum-cafe frequented by earthy red-neck farming types in rusty old station wagons, a completely different sort of white South African to those we have met so far in Wilderness and Swellendam. Then we continued along the road to the “Woodville Big Tree Circular Walk”.
It was as the name says. There was a big tree - a very big tree - an 8 century old Yellow-wood whose great venerable branches craned out high above the rest of the canopy. A host of small birds played amongst its upper leaves, giving us sore necks trying to work out what they all were. We walked around the circular walk which was only a couple of kilometres but it was rather dark due to the rain and I got eaten alive by the mosquitoes. It was lovely forest though - plenty of mature native trees, and we saw a whole party of Green Wood Hoopoes, big black woodland birds with curled red bills reminiscent of choughs.
We stopped off in Wilderness town centre on the way back to book a table for a Valentine/my birthday meal, then back to the cottage to dry out our boots and nurse our bites.
Day 13. Wilderness.
A better day today - it’s been overcast and there’s been a few patches of fine drizzle, but it’s been refreshingly cool. We drove down to Eden Adventures and hired a two-man canoe first thing.
We paddled very slowly upriver between the reeds, getting very close to the resident jackal buzzard who was perched on a riverbank post. At the Ebb & Flow campsite we drifted ourselves right up to a pair of white-fronted cormorants. A lot of birds aren’t bothered about you when you’re in a canoe.
We entered a wooded ravine and it was like exploring a lost world. We saw quite a few Knysna Louries flying from tree to tree, and a giant kingfisher who wouldn’t allow us anywhere near him, canoe or no canoe. It’s the world’s largest kingfisher, 43-46cm long. The first place we landed was beside a pulley raft bridge affair, a sort of boy-scout style raft floating on plastic drums that you hauled yourself across the river on by way of a rope pulley. Over on the other bank though the path was rubbish and I realised we’d landed at the wrong place, blindly following the canoeists ahead of us. We did this same trip twelve years ago, and I’d thought it didn’t seem to be the right place, so we re-embarked and paddled further upriver.
Finding the correct landing beach, where the river becomes too shallow to paddle any further, we left the canoe and walked up the riverside track a short way until we discovered a new boardwalk. Last time we’d come here it had been a muddy jungle track following a water pipeline, but now they have built the M1 motorway of all boardwalks, for a couple of kilometres. It was a Wonder of the Modern World! Excuse me for getting so excited, but I used to build boardwalks myself when I lived in Scotland many years ago, and I’m a bit of an aficionado.
There was a hand rail all along the downhill side and the walkway climbed up and down the vertiginous valley walls, becoming a staircase in the steepest places. The boards were furrowed to make them non-slippery and it was all professionally jointed and held together with screws not nails. On the really high sections it was supported on telegraph pole sized legs with concrete foundations. How did they get all that timber up there? They’d obviously taken great care not to cut down any living trees in erecting it, diligently cutting out section of the boards to fit them around tree trunks and even hanging lianas that protruded across its route.
At the top of the boardwalk there was a series of two waterfalls. We scrambled up the steep rock to the upper fall, and I had a swim in a deep dark pool underneath it. Not too cold once you’re in, and very refreshing. We ate sandwiches and returned by the same route.
Coming back down in the canoe we found the giant kingfishers again, a pair this time, but they just will not allow you to get close enough for a decent picture. Several Half-collared kingfishers with dazzling blue backs went past us like bullets. I was quite worn out by the time we got back to the canoe office, although I think we’d only paddled about 2km in each direction. We drove into town to do some shopping then came back to the cottage to relax a while.
Later we drove in to town again and enjoyed a great Valentine/Birthday meal at the Pomodoro Italian restaurant. The place was buzzing, with numerous waiters scurrying hither and thither. I had a 500 gramme T-bone steak. I’ve just finished reading a book about how bad steak is not just for oneself but for the health of the planet in general, so feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself. But it is my birthday.
A better day today - it’s been overcast and there’s been a few patches of fine drizzle, but it’s been refreshingly cool. We drove down to Eden Adventures and hired a two-man canoe first thing.
We paddled very slowly upriver between the reeds, getting very close to the resident jackal buzzard who was perched on a riverbank post. At the Ebb & Flow campsite we drifted ourselves right up to a pair of white-fronted cormorants. A lot of birds aren’t bothered about you when you’re in a canoe.
We entered a wooded ravine and it was like exploring a lost world. We saw quite a few Knysna Louries flying from tree to tree, and a giant kingfisher who wouldn’t allow us anywhere near him, canoe or no canoe. It’s the world’s largest kingfisher, 43-46cm long. The first place we landed was beside a pulley raft bridge affair, a sort of boy-scout style raft floating on plastic drums that you hauled yourself across the river on by way of a rope pulley. Over on the other bank though the path was rubbish and I realised we’d landed at the wrong place, blindly following the canoeists ahead of us. We did this same trip twelve years ago, and I’d thought it didn’t seem to be the right place, so we re-embarked and paddled further upriver.
Finding the correct landing beach, where the river becomes too shallow to paddle any further, we left the canoe and walked up the riverside track a short way until we discovered a new boardwalk. Last time we’d come here it had been a muddy jungle track following a water pipeline, but now they have built the M1 motorway of all boardwalks, for a couple of kilometres. It was a Wonder of the Modern World! Excuse me for getting so excited, but I used to build boardwalks myself when I lived in Scotland many years ago, and I’m a bit of an aficionado.
There was a hand rail all along the downhill side and the walkway climbed up and down the vertiginous valley walls, becoming a staircase in the steepest places. The boards were furrowed to make them non-slippery and it was all professionally jointed and held together with screws not nails. On the really high sections it was supported on telegraph pole sized legs with concrete foundations. How did they get all that timber up there? They’d obviously taken great care not to cut down any living trees in erecting it, diligently cutting out section of the boards to fit them around tree trunks and even hanging lianas that protruded across its route.
At the top of the boardwalk there was a series of two waterfalls. We scrambled up the steep rock to the upper fall, and I had a swim in a deep dark pool underneath it. Not too cold once you’re in, and very refreshing. We ate sandwiches and returned by the same route.
Coming back down in the canoe we found the giant kingfishers again, a pair this time, but they just will not allow you to get close enough for a decent picture. Several Half-collared kingfishers with dazzling blue backs went past us like bullets. I was quite worn out by the time we got back to the canoe office, although I think we’d only paddled about 2km in each direction. We drove into town to do some shopping then came back to the cottage to relax a while.
Later we drove in to town again and enjoyed a great Valentine/Birthday meal at the Pomodoro Italian restaurant. The place was buzzing, with numerous waiters scurrying hither and thither. I had a 500 gramme T-bone steak. I’ve just finished reading a book about how bad steak is not just for oneself but for the health of the planet in general, so feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself. But it is my birthday.
Day 14. Addo Elephant National Park.
We left Wilderness at about 10.30am this morning. It was already a scorching hot day. I filled up with petrol at the Caltex station at the top of the lane. There’s no self-service petrol in this country and the pump attendants are very flamboyant, clowning about and chatting you up hoping for a tip, waving you into their own pump bay as soon as you turn off the road. They clean your windscreens with a sponge and squeegee, and if they’re really going for it the side windows too. The one who filled me up again this afternoon checked my tyre pressures too. It’s a hire car - what the hell! I haven’t even looked under the bonnet yet.
We were tempted by a big farmer’s market that’s on a Saturday morning in the next village of Sedgefield, but resolutely drove on past wanting to make good speed to Addo, a four hour drive according to google maps.
The early part of the drive was littered with things to divert us from our path - lagoons and forests and craft centres - but we continued on, stopping only at the town of Knysna which proved to be not at all interesting. We found a bottle shop there in a bustling Saturday morning modern shopping arcade, and loaded up the car with more bottles of cheap Pinotage and Windhoek Lager than we can sensibly drink in the few days remaining to us in South Africa. I expect I’ll manage though..! The bottle shop had a big walk-in refrigerated room just for the beer. That’s what I call a proper offy!
Beyond Knysna the terrain became more arid, and soon we were motoring along a seemingly endless, near-deserted highway through huge plantations of Cape Pine trees, the roadsides lined with a pretty strip of natural fynbos scrub, the giant erica shrubs flowering in purple, and as always a range of hazy mountains to our left. We passed through no more towns nor villages, and couldn’t even find a place to stop for lunch. About 2pm there was a “picnic site” - just a grubby lay-by in the middle of nowhere with some concrete tables where we hastily ate a sandwich with cars rushing past our noses. A young couple with a small child were sitting in the lay-by disconsolately displaying bags of some anonymous fruit, with the look of people who don’t really expect anybody to stop and buy in a whole day.
We stayed on the N2 through Port Elizabeth. What I saw of it, it looked like a grim sprawling industrial town. We sped along the coastline for a while where angry waves hurled themselves against a jumbled wall of concrete four-legged sea-defence objects, then turned off for Addo. Stopped for more petrol then passed along the most grotty highway we’ve seen so far, through a township of ramshackle tin huts and great mountains of rubbish strewn far and wide. I know we have been largely shielded from the grim reality of South Africa until now on this journey.
We were quite quickly out of Port Elizabeth, and moving cautiously along a potholed road through an arid wilderness that appeared to hold no life whatsoever. Another half hour or so we arrived at the Addo Elephant National Park main rest camp. The reception was extremely busy - I think all the guests today had arrived at once. We’re in a “Forest Cabin” - it’s quite adequate, a single roomed log hut with 4 single beds, bathroom and - thank God! -a proper air conditioning unit, not just a fan. The temperature here is absolutely shocking after the two dull days we’ve had in Wilderness. We have to use a communal kitchen but we have all our own cooking implements provided in the cabin, and nobody else used the kitchen this evening - I think they all must be eating at the restaurant. The rest camp is a big complex, but all the units are spread out and surrounded by thorn bushes, so it feels as if you’re almost on your own.
We left Wilderness at about 10.30am this morning. It was already a scorching hot day. I filled up with petrol at the Caltex station at the top of the lane. There’s no self-service petrol in this country and the pump attendants are very flamboyant, clowning about and chatting you up hoping for a tip, waving you into their own pump bay as soon as you turn off the road. They clean your windscreens with a sponge and squeegee, and if they’re really going for it the side windows too. The one who filled me up again this afternoon checked my tyre pressures too. It’s a hire car - what the hell! I haven’t even looked under the bonnet yet.
We were tempted by a big farmer’s market that’s on a Saturday morning in the next village of Sedgefield, but resolutely drove on past wanting to make good speed to Addo, a four hour drive according to google maps.
The early part of the drive was littered with things to divert us from our path - lagoons and forests and craft centres - but we continued on, stopping only at the town of Knysna which proved to be not at all interesting. We found a bottle shop there in a bustling Saturday morning modern shopping arcade, and loaded up the car with more bottles of cheap Pinotage and Windhoek Lager than we can sensibly drink in the few days remaining to us in South Africa. I expect I’ll manage though..! The bottle shop had a big walk-in refrigerated room just for the beer. That’s what I call a proper offy!
Beyond Knysna the terrain became more arid, and soon we were motoring along a seemingly endless, near-deserted highway through huge plantations of Cape Pine trees, the roadsides lined with a pretty strip of natural fynbos scrub, the giant erica shrubs flowering in purple, and as always a range of hazy mountains to our left. We passed through no more towns nor villages, and couldn’t even find a place to stop for lunch. About 2pm there was a “picnic site” - just a grubby lay-by in the middle of nowhere with some concrete tables where we hastily ate a sandwich with cars rushing past our noses. A young couple with a small child were sitting in the lay-by disconsolately displaying bags of some anonymous fruit, with the look of people who don’t really expect anybody to stop and buy in a whole day.
We stayed on the N2 through Port Elizabeth. What I saw of it, it looked like a grim sprawling industrial town. We sped along the coastline for a while where angry waves hurled themselves against a jumbled wall of concrete four-legged sea-defence objects, then turned off for Addo. Stopped for more petrol then passed along the most grotty highway we’ve seen so far, through a township of ramshackle tin huts and great mountains of rubbish strewn far and wide. I know we have been largely shielded from the grim reality of South Africa until now on this journey.
We were quite quickly out of Port Elizabeth, and moving cautiously along a potholed road through an arid wilderness that appeared to hold no life whatsoever. Another half hour or so we arrived at the Addo Elephant National Park main rest camp. The reception was extremely busy - I think all the guests today had arrived at once. We’re in a “Forest Cabin” - it’s quite adequate, a single roomed log hut with 4 single beds, bathroom and - thank God! -a proper air conditioning unit, not just a fan. The temperature here is absolutely shocking after the two dull days we’ve had in Wilderness. We have to use a communal kitchen but we have all our own cooking implements provided in the cabin, and nobody else used the kitchen this evening - I think they all must be eating at the restaurant. The rest camp is a big complex, but all the units are spread out and surrounded by thorn bushes, so it feels as if you’re almost on your own.
Day 15. Addo.
We got up at an outrageous hour this morning to go on the 6am game drive. Twenty tourists on a big noisy truck roaring around the reserve - well, I knew it would be like that, it always is, but I’d thought it would be our best chance of seeing a lion. But as it turned out we saw relatively little, since it had rained overnight and was very misty. Also, as Ryan the knowledgeable driver/guide told us, the animals wouldn’t be visiting the waterholes because they can drink from puddles out in the bush.
But we did see several very tame black-backed jackals, dung beetles rolling huge balls of you-know-whats, kudus - big antelopes with huge helical horns, a ginormous leopard snail the size of your hand, red hartebeest, warthogs, and in the final thirty minutes of our two hours we at last came across a few elephants, although we didn’t get very good views. Mostly back and bum.
Returning to the camp reception area we had a look in their underground hide, and we saw a pair of female vervet monkeys, each carrying a rather overgrown baby clinging on underneath them. One baby had its tail wrapped around its mother’s. The mothers leaped up onto the 7-foot hide-screening fence and disappeared onto the roof as if they were carrying nothing at all. There was also a male lurking at a distance, flaunting his psycadelically blue testicles, visible without binoculars.
We breakfasted back at the cabin and then returned to the game viewing area in our own car. We did a lot better on our own as it turned out. Right in the entrance gate there was a giant tortoise, and we saw several more in the next hour. The rain brings them out. We headed first to a waterhole which Ryan had told us was good for secretary birds. We didn’t see one, but there was a great view down onto it from above, and in about fifteen minutes we saw four zebras, a jackal, a tortoise, warthogs, black-crowned herons, a black-necked grebe, blacksmith plovers and South African shelducks.
We left the tarmacked road and went along a long loop on gravel, but the roads here are a lot better than they were at Pilanesberg last year where I was in constant fear of losing my exhaust. We saw four birds which we both agreed were bustards but couldn’t decide whether Kori or Southern Black Korhaan. They were a long way away, half hidden on the edge of some scrub and the heat shimmer was warping our view. We spent a good half-hour parked up looking at them. Don’t we have anything better to do?
We drove up to a high lookout point, and in the distance could make out a line of brown shapes that could only be elephants. So we hurried down to where they were, and suddenly we were literally surrounded by mother and calf elephants. I don’t know how many, but they were right beside the road and kept popping out of the thorn bushes and walking across the road as if there was nobody there. In fact, there was a complete gridlock of vehicles stopped to look. We had elephants right outside the car window.
We continued on to Hapoor waterhole and soon saw a lovely yellow mongoose, chomping away on dung beetles. A couple of jackals were foraging amongst the piles of elephant dung around the waterhole. We returned to the gate by way of another long dirt road. Saw some good kudus and red hartebeests, and whatever I’ve forgotten to mention will have to remain unsaid...it’s getting late now...zzz
We got up at an outrageous hour this morning to go on the 6am game drive. Twenty tourists on a big noisy truck roaring around the reserve - well, I knew it would be like that, it always is, but I’d thought it would be our best chance of seeing a lion. But as it turned out we saw relatively little, since it had rained overnight and was very misty. Also, as Ryan the knowledgeable driver/guide told us, the animals wouldn’t be visiting the waterholes because they can drink from puddles out in the bush.
But we did see several very tame black-backed jackals, dung beetles rolling huge balls of you-know-whats, kudus - big antelopes with huge helical horns, a ginormous leopard snail the size of your hand, red hartebeest, warthogs, and in the final thirty minutes of our two hours we at last came across a few elephants, although we didn’t get very good views. Mostly back and bum.
Returning to the camp reception area we had a look in their underground hide, and we saw a pair of female vervet monkeys, each carrying a rather overgrown baby clinging on underneath them. One baby had its tail wrapped around its mother’s. The mothers leaped up onto the 7-foot hide-screening fence and disappeared onto the roof as if they were carrying nothing at all. There was also a male lurking at a distance, flaunting his psycadelically blue testicles, visible without binoculars.
We breakfasted back at the cabin and then returned to the game viewing area in our own car. We did a lot better on our own as it turned out. Right in the entrance gate there was a giant tortoise, and we saw several more in the next hour. The rain brings them out. We headed first to a waterhole which Ryan had told us was good for secretary birds. We didn’t see one, but there was a great view down onto it from above, and in about fifteen minutes we saw four zebras, a jackal, a tortoise, warthogs, black-crowned herons, a black-necked grebe, blacksmith plovers and South African shelducks.
We left the tarmacked road and went along a long loop on gravel, but the roads here are a lot better than they were at Pilanesberg last year where I was in constant fear of losing my exhaust. We saw four birds which we both agreed were bustards but couldn’t decide whether Kori or Southern Black Korhaan. They were a long way away, half hidden on the edge of some scrub and the heat shimmer was warping our view. We spent a good half-hour parked up looking at them. Don’t we have anything better to do?
We drove up to a high lookout point, and in the distance could make out a line of brown shapes that could only be elephants. So we hurried down to where they were, and suddenly we were literally surrounded by mother and calf elephants. I don’t know how many, but they were right beside the road and kept popping out of the thorn bushes and walking across the road as if there was nobody there. In fact, there was a complete gridlock of vehicles stopped to look. We had elephants right outside the car window.
We continued on to Hapoor waterhole and soon saw a lovely yellow mongoose, chomping away on dung beetles. A couple of jackals were foraging amongst the piles of elephant dung around the waterhole. We returned to the gate by way of another long dirt road. Saw some good kudus and red hartebeests, and whatever I’ve forgotten to mention will have to remain unsaid...it’s getting late now...zzz
Day 16. Addo.
The day has been great since the moment I stepped out blinking into the sun. From the veranda I could see a herd of about a dozen elephants slowly browsing their way down the hill towards the rest camp. We watched them coming closer as we breakfasted, but they were still a long way off, almost invisible amongst the hillside scrub without binoculars.
We had a few things to do at the reception area first of all, and we had a look out over the waterhole there - nothing doing, but there was a beautiful black-collared barbet in the tree above us. We didn’t set off on our self-guided drive in the park until about 10.30, but it didn’t matter. We saw a huge bull elephant on the hillside above us within five minutes of entering the gate, and zebras and kudus.
We drove along the central tarmac road as briskly as we could, and as soon as we got a view across to the Hapoor Dam waterhole where we’d been yesterday, we couldn’t believe our eyes. First we noticed all the tourists’ cars parked near the muddy pool, but then we saw they were looking at a herd of well over a hundred elephants! We hurried down as fast as we dared in a 40km/h speed limit area with critically endangered animals crawling across the road.
It was a sight I will never forget. The elephants were milling around the waterhole en-masse, bulls, cows and calves, some of them sploshing about in the muddy gruel and spraying jets of brown goo over their backs. There was trumpeting and skirmishes, and all types of pachydermal mucking about. We parked there for an hour, just watching and taking pictures and vids. A sedge of herons sat nonchalantly in the midst of the tumult, and a warthog grazed peaceably in front of our car.
We drove on to the park’s fenced-in picnic area where we ate a sandwich under an uncomfortably hot sunshade. The day has been brutally hot. Then we carried on to the southern section of the park where not so many people go. It was very hilly, and we saw a pair of young bull elephants in a waterhole surrounded by many warthogs, but not much else, so we turned around and exited the park via the mid-way gate on a road heading to Addo village, wanting to buy some more drinking water.
This was a bad move because the road to Addo was a lot longer than we had anticipated and unsurfaced. Addo village is utterly horrendous - a huge geometric housing estate of grim little box houses surrounded by an arid wasteland that was like a massive rubbish dump. Why do people still have to live in such awful places? When we got back onto the surfaced road we rushed back to the main gate to the rest camp as fast as we could.
We went back into the wildlife viewing area because people had been telling us they’d seen two lions at Domkrag Dam, not far from the gate. There’s a good view down onto a waterhole there and you’re allowed to get out of your car. As we arrived there was a huge fight between two rival pairs of African Shelduck on the waterhole, the two drakes splashing about as if they were trying to drown one another. We had to retreat to the car because there was a massive thunderstorm for ten minutes, but then we noticed something sticking out from behind a distance thorn bush which could only be part of a lion. We stayed there for a full two hours hoping it would stand up and walk out, but the best it did was to roll over a few times. After ninety minutes it raised its head and we could see that it was a huge male with a great shaggy mane. When it finally did stand up at the end of the two hours, it just wandered right behind the thorn bush out of our view, and we had to dash to get to the gate before it was locked at 6.30pm.
We had a swim in the pool to cool off. The water is quite warm, and a disturbing green colour. Perhaps the warthogs share it with us after dark? Best not to think about it. Swallows were swooping low over the surface as we swam, taking little sips of water as they skimmed past.
The day has been great since the moment I stepped out blinking into the sun. From the veranda I could see a herd of about a dozen elephants slowly browsing their way down the hill towards the rest camp. We watched them coming closer as we breakfasted, but they were still a long way off, almost invisible amongst the hillside scrub without binoculars.
We had a few things to do at the reception area first of all, and we had a look out over the waterhole there - nothing doing, but there was a beautiful black-collared barbet in the tree above us. We didn’t set off on our self-guided drive in the park until about 10.30, but it didn’t matter. We saw a huge bull elephant on the hillside above us within five minutes of entering the gate, and zebras and kudus.
We drove along the central tarmac road as briskly as we could, and as soon as we got a view across to the Hapoor Dam waterhole where we’d been yesterday, we couldn’t believe our eyes. First we noticed all the tourists’ cars parked near the muddy pool, but then we saw they were looking at a herd of well over a hundred elephants! We hurried down as fast as we dared in a 40km/h speed limit area with critically endangered animals crawling across the road.
It was a sight I will never forget. The elephants were milling around the waterhole en-masse, bulls, cows and calves, some of them sploshing about in the muddy gruel and spraying jets of brown goo over their backs. There was trumpeting and skirmishes, and all types of pachydermal mucking about. We parked there for an hour, just watching and taking pictures and vids. A sedge of herons sat nonchalantly in the midst of the tumult, and a warthog grazed peaceably in front of our car.
We drove on to the park’s fenced-in picnic area where we ate a sandwich under an uncomfortably hot sunshade. The day has been brutally hot. Then we carried on to the southern section of the park where not so many people go. It was very hilly, and we saw a pair of young bull elephants in a waterhole surrounded by many warthogs, but not much else, so we turned around and exited the park via the mid-way gate on a road heading to Addo village, wanting to buy some more drinking water.
This was a bad move because the road to Addo was a lot longer than we had anticipated and unsurfaced. Addo village is utterly horrendous - a huge geometric housing estate of grim little box houses surrounded by an arid wasteland that was like a massive rubbish dump. Why do people still have to live in such awful places? When we got back onto the surfaced road we rushed back to the main gate to the rest camp as fast as we could.
We went back into the wildlife viewing area because people had been telling us they’d seen two lions at Domkrag Dam, not far from the gate. There’s a good view down onto a waterhole there and you’re allowed to get out of your car. As we arrived there was a huge fight between two rival pairs of African Shelduck on the waterhole, the two drakes splashing about as if they were trying to drown one another. We had to retreat to the car because there was a massive thunderstorm for ten minutes, but then we noticed something sticking out from behind a distance thorn bush which could only be part of a lion. We stayed there for a full two hours hoping it would stand up and walk out, but the best it did was to roll over a few times. After ninety minutes it raised its head and we could see that it was a huge male with a great shaggy mane. When it finally did stand up at the end of the two hours, it just wandered right behind the thorn bush out of our view, and we had to dash to get to the gate before it was locked at 6.30pm.
We had a swim in the pool to cool off. The water is quite warm, and a disturbing green colour. Perhaps the warthogs share it with us after dark? Best not to think about it. Swallows were swooping low over the surface as we swam, taking little sips of water as they skimmed past.
Day 17. Addo.
We got up early today and went off on a horse ride. The stables are near the entrance gate, and you have to walk through a tunnel underneath the railway embankment, the ceiling of which is embossed with swallows’ nests. They have some fine looking horses. Mine was a white mare called Moonlight. There was an English mother and son on the tour with us, and a guide led the way on the most independent natured of the five horses. We couldn’t do the usual route into the wildlife viewing area, because the lions we’d seen last night were still close to the gate. Apparently, they don’t often come right up to this end of the park.
We trotted sedately around the outside of the perimeter elephant fence, and then cut through some bush on the return. Didn’t see any animals except a bushbuck and a kudu, but it was a pleasant couple of hours. I was walking funny when I dismounted - it’s been quite a few years since I last rode a horse.
We’ve had to change accommodation this morning because we couldn’t book four consecutive nights in a cabin, so we had to mooch around the reception, shop and restaurant for a few hours until our safari tent was ready. It’s the plushest tent you can imagine - a permanent frame, the size of our previous cabin, with proper beds, wardrobes, wooden floorboards and a fridge/freezer. We have to use a communal kitchen and shower/WC block. How we are roughing it! The veranda looks straight out onto a waterhole, and as soon as we moved in there was a big flock of bishop birds on the muddy shore, one of my all-time favourites. They’re black and a glowing orange colour.
We were soon off lion hunting once more. Didn’t see any, but we found there was still quite a good herd of elephants at the Hapoor Dam. Then coming back via Domkrag Dam hoping the lions might still be around, we were lucky enough to see a pair of secretary birds instead.
We came back to the rest camp at 5pm, and went straight off again on a “Sundowner Drive”. Another game drive in a big noisy truck with twenty other tourists and a knowledgeable guide, this time with sundowner drinks and snacks included. We saw elephants aplenty, some lovely bull kudus with their great twisted horns, and coming back after drinks at a waterhole we saw our first and only buffalo right beside the road.
I’m on the veranda in the dark now, and the noise of in insects and frogs from the waterhole is deafening. Jackals were singing earlier, and there’s occasional flashes of lightning. A porcupine snuffled past below us while we were eating our dinner.
We got up early today and went off on a horse ride. The stables are near the entrance gate, and you have to walk through a tunnel underneath the railway embankment, the ceiling of which is embossed with swallows’ nests. They have some fine looking horses. Mine was a white mare called Moonlight. There was an English mother and son on the tour with us, and a guide led the way on the most independent natured of the five horses. We couldn’t do the usual route into the wildlife viewing area, because the lions we’d seen last night were still close to the gate. Apparently, they don’t often come right up to this end of the park.
We trotted sedately around the outside of the perimeter elephant fence, and then cut through some bush on the return. Didn’t see any animals except a bushbuck and a kudu, but it was a pleasant couple of hours. I was walking funny when I dismounted - it’s been quite a few years since I last rode a horse.
We’ve had to change accommodation this morning because we couldn’t book four consecutive nights in a cabin, so we had to mooch around the reception, shop and restaurant for a few hours until our safari tent was ready. It’s the plushest tent you can imagine - a permanent frame, the size of our previous cabin, with proper beds, wardrobes, wooden floorboards and a fridge/freezer. We have to use a communal kitchen and shower/WC block. How we are roughing it! The veranda looks straight out onto a waterhole, and as soon as we moved in there was a big flock of bishop birds on the muddy shore, one of my all-time favourites. They’re black and a glowing orange colour.
We were soon off lion hunting once more. Didn’t see any, but we found there was still quite a good herd of elephants at the Hapoor Dam. Then coming back via Domkrag Dam hoping the lions might still be around, we were lucky enough to see a pair of secretary birds instead.
We came back to the rest camp at 5pm, and went straight off again on a “Sundowner Drive”. Another game drive in a big noisy truck with twenty other tourists and a knowledgeable guide, this time with sundowner drinks and snacks included. We saw elephants aplenty, some lovely bull kudus with their great twisted horns, and coming back after drinks at a waterhole we saw our first and only buffalo right beside the road.
I’m on the veranda in the dark now, and the noise of in insects and frogs from the waterhole is deafening. Jackals were singing earlier, and there’s occasional flashes of lightning. A porcupine snuffled past below us while we were eating our dinner.
Day 18. Karoo National Park, near Beaufort West.
A lot of rain overnight hammering on the roof of our “tent”, which meant that no animals came to drink at our doorstep waterhole, but instead we were blessed with a whole host of small birds. The first things I saw, stepping outside in my pyjamas was a pair of water thick-knees with two fluffy little chicks on the waterside mud. Then we had bishop birds, Cape sparrows, pied starlings, masked weavers, boubous, bulbuls...many of them coming to take breadcrumbs from our balcony rail.
We left Addo at about 10.30am. Drove through a number of nowhere villages, past fruit orchards and along the foot of the northern mountainous section of Addo Park, which took us a couple of hours. The park covers a huge area. Then we drove through a high pass and on the other side it was far more arid. We headed northwards towards Graaf Reinet, on a road that didn’t deviate for twenty miles at a stretch. We were almost alone on the road.
Graaf Reinet we’ve stayed in, the first time we came to South Africa. A strange little town right out in the desert with nowhere near it less than a couple of hours drive, overhung by great red jagged hills. The town centre is very colonial and quaint, but most of the rest of it is rather shabby. We had a sedate cup of coffee at a sedate veranda tearoom, and wandered around the elegant part of town trying to remember exactly where it was we’d stayed the first time.
Then we headed off into the Karoo desert, a highway even straighter and emptier than before. Every five miles or so we saw a few desultory goats or sheep or cattle trying to chew some sustenance out of the dry brown herbage. The landscape was dotted with lonely wind pumps. Why don’t they just give up trying to raise livestock on such useless terrain? What is the economic benefit? Just give it up to nature once more! Or put a huge solar energy farm on it, save digging up any more coal...
The only wildlife interest we saw was a pair of blue cranes that settled close to the road in an area of utter desolation about half way between Graaf Reinet and Beaufort West, a good 70km from either town. We pulled over to look at them. A hot wind played eerie tunes on an endless high-tension wire fence along the roadside, and no traffic passed us for ten minutes. Utterly alone with the cranes.
Beaufort West is similar to Graaf Reinet but without being interesting. We bought groceries and petrol. Then five minutes down the N1 we entered the Karoo national park. Suddenly we’re in a pristine world once more, heading up a road through desert scrub into softly amber lit mountains, zebras and ostriches to left and right. The rest camp here is obscenely luxurious for the pitiful £60 a night we’re paying. Our “chalet” is a palace looking out into a wilderness of terrible beauty. We cooled off in the cold blue swimming pool, lightning dancing around the red mountain peaks as we wallowed.
A lot of rain overnight hammering on the roof of our “tent”, which meant that no animals came to drink at our doorstep waterhole, but instead we were blessed with a whole host of small birds. The first things I saw, stepping outside in my pyjamas was a pair of water thick-knees with two fluffy little chicks on the waterside mud. Then we had bishop birds, Cape sparrows, pied starlings, masked weavers, boubous, bulbuls...many of them coming to take breadcrumbs from our balcony rail.
We left Addo at about 10.30am. Drove through a number of nowhere villages, past fruit orchards and along the foot of the northern mountainous section of Addo Park, which took us a couple of hours. The park covers a huge area. Then we drove through a high pass and on the other side it was far more arid. We headed northwards towards Graaf Reinet, on a road that didn’t deviate for twenty miles at a stretch. We were almost alone on the road.
Graaf Reinet we’ve stayed in, the first time we came to South Africa. A strange little town right out in the desert with nowhere near it less than a couple of hours drive, overhung by great red jagged hills. The town centre is very colonial and quaint, but most of the rest of it is rather shabby. We had a sedate cup of coffee at a sedate veranda tearoom, and wandered around the elegant part of town trying to remember exactly where it was we’d stayed the first time.
Then we headed off into the Karoo desert, a highway even straighter and emptier than before. Every five miles or so we saw a few desultory goats or sheep or cattle trying to chew some sustenance out of the dry brown herbage. The landscape was dotted with lonely wind pumps. Why don’t they just give up trying to raise livestock on such useless terrain? What is the economic benefit? Just give it up to nature once more! Or put a huge solar energy farm on it, save digging up any more coal...
The only wildlife interest we saw was a pair of blue cranes that settled close to the road in an area of utter desolation about half way between Graaf Reinet and Beaufort West, a good 70km from either town. We pulled over to look at them. A hot wind played eerie tunes on an endless high-tension wire fence along the roadside, and no traffic passed us for ten minutes. Utterly alone with the cranes.
Beaufort West is similar to Graaf Reinet but without being interesting. We bought groceries and petrol. Then five minutes down the N1 we entered the Karoo national park. Suddenly we’re in a pristine world once more, heading up a road through desert scrub into softly amber lit mountains, zebras and ostriches to left and right. The rest camp here is obscenely luxurious for the pitiful £60 a night we’re paying. Our “chalet” is a palace looking out into a wilderness of terrible beauty. We cooled off in the cold blue swimming pool, lightning dancing around the red mountain peaks as we wallowed.
Day 19. Karoo.
The Karoo National Park Rest Camp is completely over the top in terms of construction and luxury, for a community that is nestled up in the mountains of a vast desert six kilometres off the motorway. Our “chalet” is tall enough that it could accommodate two stories, with a criss-cross of huge wooden beams supporting an elephantine thatched roof, like a medieval banqueting hall. The brai unit on the veranda looks like the boiler for a 1920s apartment block. There’s about 30 such buildings in the complex, and a reception/shop/restaurant unit that looks like a 5 star hotel. The place was built in 1989. I suspect it was a hugely subsidised last gasp of the apartheid regime, eager to show wealthy foreign potential investors what a great country South Africa was, when nearly all of the world’s governments refused to have anything to do with the country. So now us annoying little former student anti-apartheid campaigners are enjoying it!
This morning we saw ostriches and springbok on the plain from our veranda, and there were a few zebra there when we came home this afternoon. Breakfast in the restaurant is included in our trivial room fees, so I had a slap-up full-English in the restaurant. We hit the self-drive trail at 9.30am.
It’s 27 miles of quite good gravel road heading up a tortuous mountain pass onto a high plateau. The leaflets promise it takes two and a half hours, but it took us more than seven. Much of the way it seemed like we were seeing nothing, driving through beautiful but stark and lifeless landscapes of red mountains and brown plains, but over time we saw a pretty good list of animals, even though our great goals of lion and black rhino were missing. Steenbok, Hartebeest, Ostrich, Springbok, both Mountain and Plains Zebra, Gemsbok, Klipsringer, Kudu, Grey Rhebok and a three foot monitor lizard basking beside the road.
The Gemsbok were the stars: black and white striped faces and a pair of backward curving metre long horns. We saw one very distantly near the horizon of a mountain ridge early on, and thought that would be our lot, but on the final section of the circuit which is across an arid lowland desert plain, we passed one lying down quite close to the road that allowed us to look at it for several minutes before getting up and wandering away, and not long after we saw a group of six trotting across the desert. One of them had only one horn. Was it a unicorn?
We had sandwiches at the park’s picnic site half way along the route, protected from the alleged lions by an electric fence, watching sweet little black and white fairy flycatchers fluttering in and out of the shading acacia trees.
When we got back to the rest camp we had a quick dip in the swimming pool at the top end of the complex, which seemed even colder than yesterday. Robbie rescued six tiny frogs that had fallen into the highly chlorinated water. Then we walked around the short “fossil trail”, a sort of open-air museum with lots of fossilised creatures from the Permian period (before dinosaurs), for which the area is renowned amongst fossil types. The rest camp area is quite a large expanse of land protected from the park’s six lions by a very discrete electric fence so as not to spoil the view for us spoiled tourists, so we walked down to the camp site which is reckoned to be the best birding area. It’s surrounded by tall acacia trees, and we saw a lovely pied acacia barbet making a sound like a squeaky toy, along with all the things we’re now used to seeing.
Walked back up the hill, glad to stretch our legs for once after seven hours confined in the car, and ate up the last of our self-catering supplies in a vast stew pot. I’m working heroically now to avoid wasting any of the wonderful good quality and very economical bottles of Pinotage that I so tragically over-purchased back in Knysna...
The Karoo National Park Rest Camp is completely over the top in terms of construction and luxury, for a community that is nestled up in the mountains of a vast desert six kilometres off the motorway. Our “chalet” is tall enough that it could accommodate two stories, with a criss-cross of huge wooden beams supporting an elephantine thatched roof, like a medieval banqueting hall. The brai unit on the veranda looks like the boiler for a 1920s apartment block. There’s about 30 such buildings in the complex, and a reception/shop/restaurant unit that looks like a 5 star hotel. The place was built in 1989. I suspect it was a hugely subsidised last gasp of the apartheid regime, eager to show wealthy foreign potential investors what a great country South Africa was, when nearly all of the world’s governments refused to have anything to do with the country. So now us annoying little former student anti-apartheid campaigners are enjoying it!
This morning we saw ostriches and springbok on the plain from our veranda, and there were a few zebra there when we came home this afternoon. Breakfast in the restaurant is included in our trivial room fees, so I had a slap-up full-English in the restaurant. We hit the self-drive trail at 9.30am.
It’s 27 miles of quite good gravel road heading up a tortuous mountain pass onto a high plateau. The leaflets promise it takes two and a half hours, but it took us more than seven. Much of the way it seemed like we were seeing nothing, driving through beautiful but stark and lifeless landscapes of red mountains and brown plains, but over time we saw a pretty good list of animals, even though our great goals of lion and black rhino were missing. Steenbok, Hartebeest, Ostrich, Springbok, both Mountain and Plains Zebra, Gemsbok, Klipsringer, Kudu, Grey Rhebok and a three foot monitor lizard basking beside the road.
The Gemsbok were the stars: black and white striped faces and a pair of backward curving metre long horns. We saw one very distantly near the horizon of a mountain ridge early on, and thought that would be our lot, but on the final section of the circuit which is across an arid lowland desert plain, we passed one lying down quite close to the road that allowed us to look at it for several minutes before getting up and wandering away, and not long after we saw a group of six trotting across the desert. One of them had only one horn. Was it a unicorn?
We had sandwiches at the park’s picnic site half way along the route, protected from the alleged lions by an electric fence, watching sweet little black and white fairy flycatchers fluttering in and out of the shading acacia trees.
When we got back to the rest camp we had a quick dip in the swimming pool at the top end of the complex, which seemed even colder than yesterday. Robbie rescued six tiny frogs that had fallen into the highly chlorinated water. Then we walked around the short “fossil trail”, a sort of open-air museum with lots of fossilised creatures from the Permian period (before dinosaurs), for which the area is renowned amongst fossil types. The rest camp area is quite a large expanse of land protected from the park’s six lions by a very discrete electric fence so as not to spoil the view for us spoiled tourists, so we walked down to the camp site which is reckoned to be the best birding area. It’s surrounded by tall acacia trees, and we saw a lovely pied acacia barbet making a sound like a squeaky toy, along with all the things we’re now used to seeing.
Walked back up the hill, glad to stretch our legs for once after seven hours confined in the car, and ate up the last of our self-catering supplies in a vast stew pot. I’m working heroically now to avoid wasting any of the wonderful good quality and very economical bottles of Pinotage that I so tragically over-purchased back in Knysna...
Day 20. Karoo.
We got up at 6am this morning to go for a drive before breakfast. There was startlingly cold wind, and I think it was keeping everything hiding, because we saw very little. We headed back up the drive we’d returned on yesterday which had a lot of promising looking acacia trees, ideal black rhino habitat I thought. I’m dreaming. We saw both the zebra species’ and got very frustrated with a host of now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t LBJs, but not much else. A fine obliging pale phase Booted Eagle was what saved it from being a wasted early morning. It was perched right beside the road in a thicket, just before the gate back into the rest camp.
I had to wear a jumper and a jacket to breakfast - the climate here is completely haywire. They seem to have built the rest camp in the windiest pass in the park. I had the “Lion’s Breakfast” off the menu - steak, kidneys and eggs - just because I could. Back at the chalet we put out a few breadcrumbs in front of the veranda and attracted more birds than we’d seen on our whole early morning drive, including our favourite darlings the delightful red bishops. Cape sparrows are quite stunning too, with their black and white heads and bright chestnut wings.
We went for our second drive along the Lammertjiesleegte Loop Road (...no, I’ve no idea how you pronounce it!). It’s back along the road to the park entrance then off to the left, across a lowland plain. We came upon a troop of baboons along the main road, and saw hartebeest, ostriches and plains zebras, some of which were quite like the extinct Quaggar variety with no stripes on their hind ends. They’re trying to breed in Quaggar characteristics to the zebra herd here.
A quite bizarre thing - when we reached the electric fenced picnic area at the far end of the loop road, it had a large, gleaming blue chlorinated swimming pool surrounded by an immaculately manicured and watered lawn, way out there, surrounded by miles of arid wilderness. South Africa is weird. We had it all to ourselves. The area around the swimming pool had largish trees and was buzzing with birds. We saw, I’m sure, a juvenile Great Spotted Cuckoo flying off, with chestnut wing tips and a long tail. It’s not on the official park list, and neither of our bird books (we bought a new and bigger book at Addo) show it as present in this area. But I’m sure. African red-eyed bulbul was another first for us, a pleasant change to the omnipresent and rather dull looking Cape bulbuls.
Returning around the loop road, I rather unfortunately happened to be watching a very proximate ostrich through binoculars with its rear towards me when it decided to defecate. I’ll spare you a description, but it was one of the grossest things I’ve seen in my whole life...
When we got back to the chalet the troop of baboons from this morning had moved on to the plain outside our veranda. We had a short nap - worn out from doing nothing all day - and went out for a healthy walk of less than a mile which is as far as you can do within the confines of the lion-protected area of the rest camp, unless you want to walk around in circles.
We did the “Bossie Trail”, a short trot up the hillside as far as the electric fence. There were many plant labels beside withered woody shrubs, all equipped with vicious needles, but every one looked the same to me. I bet this place is amazing in the spring, when all these dead-looking plants come out in flower. There’s a pointed hill opposite the rest camp with a crown of red rock stained white with dassie guano, and as we were descending again we heard a barking sound from that direction. Looking back we noticed that the hillside underneath the crags was full of baboons, and rising up above them were two Black Eagles (Verraux’s Eagle, our books insist on calling them.) They hung completely motionless above the baboons, rising on a thermal as if attached to a wire.
Sat out on the veranda for an hour enjoying a sundowner (gotta get rid of all this wine) throwing breadcrumbs to the local avian fauna, realising with sadness that I still haven’t properly sorted out all the canaries, sparrows, female bishops and juvenile weaver birds. After forty years of trans-global birding, I’m still no better than a novice.
We ate at the camp restaurant tonight. I had a kudu steak, my second steak of the day. It was certainly the best steak I’ve had in South Africa. No fat, no gristle, just tender meat all the way through. And a Cape brandy pudding. Not a good day for my waistline.
We got up at 6am this morning to go for a drive before breakfast. There was startlingly cold wind, and I think it was keeping everything hiding, because we saw very little. We headed back up the drive we’d returned on yesterday which had a lot of promising looking acacia trees, ideal black rhino habitat I thought. I’m dreaming. We saw both the zebra species’ and got very frustrated with a host of now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t LBJs, but not much else. A fine obliging pale phase Booted Eagle was what saved it from being a wasted early morning. It was perched right beside the road in a thicket, just before the gate back into the rest camp.
I had to wear a jumper and a jacket to breakfast - the climate here is completely haywire. They seem to have built the rest camp in the windiest pass in the park. I had the “Lion’s Breakfast” off the menu - steak, kidneys and eggs - just because I could. Back at the chalet we put out a few breadcrumbs in front of the veranda and attracted more birds than we’d seen on our whole early morning drive, including our favourite darlings the delightful red bishops. Cape sparrows are quite stunning too, with their black and white heads and bright chestnut wings.
We went for our second drive along the Lammertjiesleegte Loop Road (...no, I’ve no idea how you pronounce it!). It’s back along the road to the park entrance then off to the left, across a lowland plain. We came upon a troop of baboons along the main road, and saw hartebeest, ostriches and plains zebras, some of which were quite like the extinct Quaggar variety with no stripes on their hind ends. They’re trying to breed in Quaggar characteristics to the zebra herd here.
A quite bizarre thing - when we reached the electric fenced picnic area at the far end of the loop road, it had a large, gleaming blue chlorinated swimming pool surrounded by an immaculately manicured and watered lawn, way out there, surrounded by miles of arid wilderness. South Africa is weird. We had it all to ourselves. The area around the swimming pool had largish trees and was buzzing with birds. We saw, I’m sure, a juvenile Great Spotted Cuckoo flying off, with chestnut wing tips and a long tail. It’s not on the official park list, and neither of our bird books (we bought a new and bigger book at Addo) show it as present in this area. But I’m sure. African red-eyed bulbul was another first for us, a pleasant change to the omnipresent and rather dull looking Cape bulbuls.
Returning around the loop road, I rather unfortunately happened to be watching a very proximate ostrich through binoculars with its rear towards me when it decided to defecate. I’ll spare you a description, but it was one of the grossest things I’ve seen in my whole life...
When we got back to the chalet the troop of baboons from this morning had moved on to the plain outside our veranda. We had a short nap - worn out from doing nothing all day - and went out for a healthy walk of less than a mile which is as far as you can do within the confines of the lion-protected area of the rest camp, unless you want to walk around in circles.
We did the “Bossie Trail”, a short trot up the hillside as far as the electric fence. There were many plant labels beside withered woody shrubs, all equipped with vicious needles, but every one looked the same to me. I bet this place is amazing in the spring, when all these dead-looking plants come out in flower. There’s a pointed hill opposite the rest camp with a crown of red rock stained white with dassie guano, and as we were descending again we heard a barking sound from that direction. Looking back we noticed that the hillside underneath the crags was full of baboons, and rising up above them were two Black Eagles (Verraux’s Eagle, our books insist on calling them.) They hung completely motionless above the baboons, rising on a thermal as if attached to a wire.
Sat out on the veranda for an hour enjoying a sundowner (gotta get rid of all this wine) throwing breadcrumbs to the local avian fauna, realising with sadness that I still haven’t properly sorted out all the canaries, sparrows, female bishops and juvenile weaver birds. After forty years of trans-global birding, I’m still no better than a novice.
We ate at the camp restaurant tonight. I had a kudu steak, my second steak of the day. It was certainly the best steak I’ve had in South Africa. No fat, no gristle, just tender meat all the way through. And a Cape brandy pudding. Not a good day for my waistline.
Day 21. Cape Town.
The chalet at Karoo always had something new for us. As soon as Robbie opened the curtains this morning, there was a zebra outside. We left the park shortly after breakfast, and on the road to the main gate we saw two giant tortoises, hartebeest, more zebras, and best of all, not far from the gate and the N1 motorway, there was a secretary bird very close to the road, near enough to see its spiky hairdo.
The motorway took us all the way into central Cape Town over about six hours, but it was a frustrating procession of road works, with women manually operating stop barriers and then several miles of single lane, one way traffic. At one barrier we waited ten minutes. The terrain became ever more arid until it was just brown soil sparsely dotted with small dead looking shrubs, a huge plain stretching towards desolate red hills.
We stopped for petrol at Laingsburg, a grim nowhere kind of place nestled at the foot of the barren hills. What do people do for a living in such places, other than sell petrol? Up in the hills it became more interesting, with splashes of vegetative colour and dramatic geology, and after an hour or two we passed through a spectacular craggy pass and descended into a lush valley of vineyards. The next even more dramatic pass culminated in a tunnel of several miles duration, and then we were into the more populated region and bearing down on Cape Town. Table Mountain rose up in front of us and the near-empty desert highway morphed into a busy six-laner.
Getting to Camps Bay was simply a matter of continuing to drive straight ahead when the motorway ended near the waterfront. We passed between the western flank of Table Mountain and the Lion’s Head, that other great protuberance of rock that makes Cape Town such a unique and picturesque city. Camps Bay is a very upmarket beach resort, expensive mansions clinging to a steep hillside.
We’re staying in a B&B called Villa Surprise a couple of streets up from the seafront. It’s very nice as always, and our room has a nautical theme, all model ships, seashells and things from boats as ornamentation. We have a huge veranda looking out over the bay, and there’s a swimming pool from which you can watch a slow-motion waterfall of cloud tumbling over the crags of Table Mountain directly above, and the cable car going up and down. Trouble is, the room’s on a corner facing north and west. It was oven hot when we arrived, but now there’s a furious sea-gale blowing and I’m worried our room will get blown away.
We walked down to the sea-front for dinner. I’d been planning a slap-up feast for our last night, but had forgotten it was Saturday night. The sea-front was heaving with party people and traffic, and every restaurant that looked any good was fully booked. We ended up with a very mediocre meal and an argument with a stroppy waiter.
The chalet at Karoo always had something new for us. As soon as Robbie opened the curtains this morning, there was a zebra outside. We left the park shortly after breakfast, and on the road to the main gate we saw two giant tortoises, hartebeest, more zebras, and best of all, not far from the gate and the N1 motorway, there was a secretary bird very close to the road, near enough to see its spiky hairdo.
The motorway took us all the way into central Cape Town over about six hours, but it was a frustrating procession of road works, with women manually operating stop barriers and then several miles of single lane, one way traffic. At one barrier we waited ten minutes. The terrain became ever more arid until it was just brown soil sparsely dotted with small dead looking shrubs, a huge plain stretching towards desolate red hills.
We stopped for petrol at Laingsburg, a grim nowhere kind of place nestled at the foot of the barren hills. What do people do for a living in such places, other than sell petrol? Up in the hills it became more interesting, with splashes of vegetative colour and dramatic geology, and after an hour or two we passed through a spectacular craggy pass and descended into a lush valley of vineyards. The next even more dramatic pass culminated in a tunnel of several miles duration, and then we were into the more populated region and bearing down on Cape Town. Table Mountain rose up in front of us and the near-empty desert highway morphed into a busy six-laner.
Getting to Camps Bay was simply a matter of continuing to drive straight ahead when the motorway ended near the waterfront. We passed between the western flank of Table Mountain and the Lion’s Head, that other great protuberance of rock that makes Cape Town such a unique and picturesque city. Camps Bay is a very upmarket beach resort, expensive mansions clinging to a steep hillside.
We’re staying in a B&B called Villa Surprise a couple of streets up from the seafront. It’s very nice as always, and our room has a nautical theme, all model ships, seashells and things from boats as ornamentation. We have a huge veranda looking out over the bay, and there’s a swimming pool from which you can watch a slow-motion waterfall of cloud tumbling over the crags of Table Mountain directly above, and the cable car going up and down. Trouble is, the room’s on a corner facing north and west. It was oven hot when we arrived, but now there’s a furious sea-gale blowing and I’m worried our room will get blown away.
We walked down to the sea-front for dinner. I’d been planning a slap-up feast for our last night, but had forgotten it was Saturday night. The sea-front was heaving with party people and traffic, and every restaurant that looked any good was fully booked. We ended up with a very mediocre meal and an argument with a stroppy waiter.
Day 22. Somewhere over Africa.
We’re on the plane now heading home, Air France this time not KL-bloody-M, so I’m full of Champagne, Cognac and Camembert, feeling mellow. Robbie’s watching The Great Gatsby, and I’ve just been listening to Led Zep on the in-flight entertainment facilities.
This morning the howling wind still raged across Camps Bay. The Swiss landlady at the B&B said it’s quite normal for Cape Town in the summer. We checked out after breakfast and first had a walk along the beach front, where a lot of die-hard sun-lovers were already laid out to grill despite the roaring gale. It can manage to be infuriatingly windy in this country whilst remaining annoyingly hot.
We drove along a sinuous coast road to Houts Bay, the next town down the Cape peninsular. The deep blue, wind tossed Atlantic to our right, the great rocky escarpment of Table Mountain to our left. Coming towards us were hordes of crazy cyclists, pedalling against the elements up and down unforgiving hills.
We hadn’t time to look at Houts Bay itself - a pity because it has a famous Sunday market - but we went instead to the World Of Birds, a big aviary collection composed mainly of injured birds and animals, and rescued pets. We didn’t have time to look at all of it because it’s huge, but the walk-through aviaries were brilliant, full of birds we’d only seen at a distance before, like secretary birds and cranes. Also a lot of exotics - cassowary, scarlet ibis, parrots from all over the tropics. Several species’ of lovely turacos, which reminded us of the Knysna Lourie as they bounced around athletically from one branch to another.
We drove back to the airport via a winding mountain road that took us up through majestic pine forests right over a saddle of Table Mountain, and led down to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. The rest was pure horror - motorways, wrong turnings, car drop-off, endless sitting around in the departures terminal...but now we’re jetting towards Paris, be home in about 12 hours...maybe...
We’re on the plane now heading home, Air France this time not KL-bloody-M, so I’m full of Champagne, Cognac and Camembert, feeling mellow. Robbie’s watching The Great Gatsby, and I’ve just been listening to Led Zep on the in-flight entertainment facilities.
This morning the howling wind still raged across Camps Bay. The Swiss landlady at the B&B said it’s quite normal for Cape Town in the summer. We checked out after breakfast and first had a walk along the beach front, where a lot of die-hard sun-lovers were already laid out to grill despite the roaring gale. It can manage to be infuriatingly windy in this country whilst remaining annoyingly hot.
We drove along a sinuous coast road to Houts Bay, the next town down the Cape peninsular. The deep blue, wind tossed Atlantic to our right, the great rocky escarpment of Table Mountain to our left. Coming towards us were hordes of crazy cyclists, pedalling against the elements up and down unforgiving hills.
We hadn’t time to look at Houts Bay itself - a pity because it has a famous Sunday market - but we went instead to the World Of Birds, a big aviary collection composed mainly of injured birds and animals, and rescued pets. We didn’t have time to look at all of it because it’s huge, but the walk-through aviaries were brilliant, full of birds we’d only seen at a distance before, like secretary birds and cranes. Also a lot of exotics - cassowary, scarlet ibis, parrots from all over the tropics. Several species’ of lovely turacos, which reminded us of the Knysna Lourie as they bounced around athletically from one branch to another.
We drove back to the airport via a winding mountain road that took us up through majestic pine forests right over a saddle of Table Mountain, and led down to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. The rest was pure horror - motorways, wrong turnings, car drop-off, endless sitting around in the departures terminal...but now we’re jetting towards Paris, be home in about 12 hours...maybe...