Dark, coffee-coloured churning rivers, deep ravines and dense indigenous forests, this is the beauty of the Tsitsikamma section of the Garden Route National Park. It encompasses 650 sq km between the towns of Plettenberg Bay and Humansdorp, as well a Marine Protected Area covering 80km of coastline. Elusive Cape clawless otters, after which the Otter Trail (a multiday hike) is named, inhabit this park; there are also baboons, monkeys, small antelope and furry little dassies. Birdlife is plentiful, including endangered African black oystercatchers.
A 77m-long suspension bridge spans the Storms River Mouth where several walking trails pass thickets of ferns, lilies, orchids, coastal and mountain fynbos (fine bush), and yellowwood and milkwood trees, some hundreds of years old. Millennia-old sandstone and quartz rock formations line the gorges and rocky shoreline, and southern right whales and dolphins are visible out in the ocean.
The Addo Elephant National Park located 70km north of Port Elizabeth, near the Sunshine Coast is South Africa’s third-largest national park protecting the remnants of the huge elephant herds that once roamed the Eastern Cape. When Addo was proclaimed a national park in 1931, there were only 11 elephants left; today there are more than 600 in the park.
A day or two at Addo is a highlight of any visit to this part of the Eastern Cape, not only for the elephants but for the lions, zebras, black rhinos, Cape buffaloes, spotted hyenas and myriad birds. The park is one of few that boasts the ‘Big Seven’, thanks to sightings of great white sharks and southern right whales (in season) in Algoa Bay. Look out, too, for the rare flightless dung beetle, endemic to Addo.
