The Garden Route (Eastern Cape)

After phoning a lot of campsites on the Garden Route we finally found space at George on their main site in the centre of town. George calls itself the capital of the Garden Route as it is fairly substantial but it is also fairly non descript.

De Hoop to George is about 350 Kms and the first 80Kms is on gravel roads so it was nearly 4pm by the time we reached George. The campsite is mega, handling some 350 sites and it seemed full with families and groups who all come mob handed, and set themselves up in encampments, not exactly the place we would normally chose but needs must and it would act as a base to explore further.

Next day we headed inland to Oudtshoorn the Ostrich capital of the world! Its a very scenic drive through the mountains to the hinterland beyond, where nearly every farm & homestead both small and large farm flocks of Ostrich, some literally in their thousands. The land is very arid so suited to Ostrich although we saw many trying to find the shade as the temperature soared into the 40 C range, easily the hottest day we had had so far.

Oudtshoorn is a pretty little town but being a public holiday was very quiet so we headed out down the old gravel road to Calltzdorp to find the Gamska Berg National Park. This road seems to go out into nowhere so at times we wondered if we were on the right track.

Gamska Berg as its name implies is situated in the mountains, it is a small park by African standards and very quiet, so quiet there was absolutely no one around when we arrived. There is a nice reception area where they rely on your honesty to sign in and pay the park entry fee.

Thankfully before we left Cape Town we had bought something called a 'Wild Card'. This card entitles you free entry to a number of South African nature reserves and national parks so if your planning to visit a number of SAN parks then buy this card when you arrive as it is extremely good value, otherwise you will pay 120 Rand per person each time you go in and out of a park such as Kruger.

In addition when you book accommodation in the park you get 5% back as a reward on your card, the theory being you then use this to buy goods from any of the participating partners, unfortunately we have yet to find any partner who will take this in payment!

The park is mainly geared for hiking and has only one 4W drive track which must be booked in advance so we thought we would do a short walk until we realised it was 42 degrees in the shade and decided to chill out and picnic instead.

The only shade was under a small Lapa in the bush, there was no game around except for a few birds like us trying to find some shade. Throwing my apple core for the birds I hit the roof beam and it fell into a thick bush so I decided to retrieve it to let the birds find it and still on UK mindset just put my hand into the bush.

Suddenly there was a very loud hissing noise right where my hand was, convinced it was a large snake I jumped back and peered into the undergrowth where to my amazement there was the biggest Leopard tortoise we have ever seen. It was a monster a good 18-24 inches long and we guess must have been at least 60 years old.

Clearly I had disturbed his afternoon nap in the shade so carefully putting back the bush (after we took his photo) we left him be, however  it was a timely wake up call not to thrust your hands into strange bushes out here!

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