Table Mountain Tales: Roaming Roads and Reserves

I took a day off, a Friday, and as such prolonged my already extended weekend ( Monday was a national holiday of some sorts). I ve been yearning for a decent vacation as I haven’t taken any since I arrived here. And that is 10 months now. Since work currently doesn’t allow me taking 2 weeks off, I settled for the long weekend and headed out to the Garden Route.

The goal was twofold. Firstly, to see and experience beautiful nature. Secondly, to finally make it out the Western Province. I haven’t even been close to the borders of the province I live in, because of it’s vast size. Western province has a surface of 129,370 km2, very close to the size ofEngland (130,422 km2) and about 4 times the size of my home country (33,990 km2). So you can understand it is quite a mission to get out of the province, if you only have a weekend’s time.

The plan was basic, the route was chosen, Shafeeka packed and I was ready to rock. In the four days I had, I did four national parks.

First one was called “Wildernis”. I’ll give you a candy bar if you can guess what

that Afrikaans word means in English. The legend goes that a woman asked her fiancé to live together in the wilderness (did I just give it away now?) for a year before they would get married. The guy, one of the clever type, built a hut in the forests near the ocean and named the hut “Wildernis”. And that is as far as the legend goes. Quite boring, I know. No man eating creatures, no daunting challenges, nothing. The same goes for the nature reserve. It was more of a resort with holiday houses around a lake, and it was hard to really feel out in nature.

Not so in the second nature reserve, Knysna forest. The woods used to be the prime spot for lumberjacks to harvest trees for timber, and today it is still a massive forest with a lot of tree giants. As much I enjoyed the thick forest initially, it soon became boring as well. Most of the path I hiked was surrounded by such dense forest that I couldn’t see far. It was almost like walking through a green tunnel.

So I opted for a short walk, and went to see Bendigo – the first gold mine in South Africa.
Again, this sounds more impressive that it really is. A few shafts and old mining equipment was all that was there to admire. I guess if you really like shafts, you would have a blast, otherwise… not so much. So on to better nature reserves.

I reached Tsitsikama n

ature reserve, just across the provincial border and achieved my second goal.Tsitsikama, to me, sounds much more exotic than other places in Afrikaans, which I find quite basic: Bobejaanberg (baboon mountain), Oranje rivier (Orange river), Buffelfontein, (Buffalo spring)… But then again Tsitsikama means “place of a lot of water”, so it just sounds better to me. Perched at the coast of the Indian ocean, and with a number of waterfalls splashing on the rocks, the name is quite suitable.

The camping site at the ocean shore was definitely one of the most beautiful places I have ever pitched my tent.

The nature reserve is stunning, and I definitely will go back there. It has one of the most beautiful trails in South Africa, called the Otter trail. It takes 5 days to

complete the+/- 40 km hike which is named after the indigenous cape clawless otter. I hiked a long the first part of it and was absolutely awed by the beauty of the scenery. I did not see any cape clawless otter, but I did encounter a troop of baboons.

The first thing you should ask yourself when you see a baboon is: “where are the others?”. You won’t find a baboon by itself, it is always in a group. And if you were to find yourself too close or even in the middle of a baboon troop, you can be in very big trouble.

The teeth of a male baboon get as big as those of a lion, and it’s bite is stronger than a dog’s. No facts I’d like to verify myself. Applying the rule that a baboon is always in a group at other times, I have actually discovered quite a few troops whilst other passers by were already gone again.

The final nature reserve I visited was “De Hoop” (The Hope). Splendid reserve with quaint cottages you can rent for the weekend. Animals scattered all over the place, more than you can shake a stick at.

De Hoop is one of the p

laces you have a good chance of seeing whales. From the months of August to October, the whales come to the shores to deliver babies, catch up on some gossip, mate and do other whale stuff. So sure enough, when I walked to the beach, I saw 4 big lumps in the water. Thrilled by this sight, I ran closer and started taking pictures. Half an hour later, still al I saw were lumps in the water.Apparently it is too much to ask of a Southern Right Whale to jump out of the water or flip its tail. I assume heaving your body out of the water is too much of an effort if you weight 90 tons.

With the four nature reserves and all the magnificent sights along the road, I was content. I was even happier about my progress made in South Africanising, and had a couple of reasons for that.

First of all I assumed – and rightfully so- that there was going to be a braai area at the camping site. So I was equipped with brickets, meat and braai utensils. I ate rusks (dry, hard cookies) for breakfast and boerewors for supper. Better still, I had two routine police checks and didn’t incur a single fine! Talk about progress.

But there are still signs that I’m European. As a European, I am used to having petrol stations regularly along the road I drive. With South Africa being such a vast country and so sparsely populated however, you can go for hours on end without having a single chance to buy petrol. So when I went out to De Hoop reserve, for some strange inexplicable reason, I did not fill up my gas tank. I had a quarter left, and knew it would take me around 150kms. Just about enough to go to the reserve and reach the next town. But why not go for certainty and fill up where I am now? I had no idea, I blame the European in me. I ended up waiting for two hours in the reserve, to buy 5 liters of extra petrol to make sure I would reach my next destination. Not entirely South African after all.