Some pictures from a fantastically enjoyable hike, the Whale Trail in the De Hoop nature reserve.
Whale Trail
Great pics – making great memories.
I did the trail when it first opened and all I can remember is how hot it was. Hope the weather was kinder to you!
Dusty, it was an absolute scorcher (the first day was somewhere in the 30′s, but felt like the upper 40′s).
But even with the heat I enjoyed every piece of the trail with the possible exception of walking along the back of Potberg where the mountainside seemed to dissolve into sheer cliff.
I actually feel a little resentful about returning to that which we call “civilization”, I wonder how long the feeling will last…
oh, how beautiful… it makes me miss home all over again (the sea being far more rugged and ‘elemental’ down there).
i’m with you re the resentment – been back for weeks now and still grudging.
i’m desperate to go to the matroosberg in the next month or two, as soon as i have enough camping gear scrounged together! have you been up to the reserve there? i would love to kip at the old herders hut.
I’ve never been to Matroosberg but having investigated Matroosberg a little on the net, it is a situation I should remedy soon.
What struck me most about the sea out there in the reserve is how it just teems with life and vibrates with the business of living.
A statistic I read in one of the overnight huts that really made an impression on me was of the galjoen they catch on the reserve to tag for research purposes. To tag the galjoen, they catch them at a rate of 6 per hour. Outside of the reserve, it seems that the average time you have to fish in order to catch a galjoen is 100 hours!
heehee… fishing is certainly time consuming. D has never developed a passion for it, while i, being able to while way hours of dreamtime with a finger on the line, have spent many pleasurabe hours at it!
i think you would enjoy my little corner of the eastern cape, since it too, teems with life… urchins; cuttlefish; anenomes; sand corals; whelks; seasnails, limpets; octopus (pi?);mosses; bullies; crabs; seaweeds that dazzle the eye and crimson shells – so tiny that they take hours to gather. i appreciate being in this city, since it allows me to be near the sea, but i have a sense of being short-changed when i explore the rock pools… it’s never quite measures up against the wonder of ‘home’.
the matroosberg *sigh*… i’ll get there… just trying to gather the camping gear, in order to do it peasant style, which, truth be told, may be the best way?!
ps: please pass on my fond regards to your lovely wife.