Springbok - Part 2

Namaqua National Park

Visitors from around the world come to this place every year for the late winter - early spring flower show. We have been twice and touched only a very small part of the park. There are campsites and roads accessible only to four-wheel drive vehicles and ours is a station wagon with very low clearance.

Access to the park is a process. We leave the lodge in Springbok and drive 65km south to the little town of Kamieskroon (http://www.saexplorer.co.za/south-africa/map/namaqualand_map.asp). The N7 is a main highway, two lanes for the most part, through hills and small mountains in this section, so the drive is not taxing.


We did a drive-thru in Kamieskroon. It seems a quite normal small town with this picturesque church. South Africans take the security of their children seriously as you can tell by this fence around one of the local schools.


At Kamieskroon we exit onto a gravel/dirt road toward the park for another 17km. This is a much more exciting drive past farms and through streams and puddles.


The flowers are the big attraction for this park and for the entire area. The weather becomes quite hot and dry in the late spring so these blooms are taking advantage of the winter rains and cool temperatures. It’s time to bloom, be pollinated and reseed. Mats of orange, blue, yellow, red and white cover the flats and hillsides.


That rock in the picture? It’s really a termite mound as you can see below. When the termites finish with the mound other critters move in. No, we didn’t see which critters.






Aardvarks, porcupines, snakes, rodents – all tend to use shelters like these.









There are some great vantage points within the park. Here Betsy is taking advantage of one of them.







Meantime I’m taking pictures of some of the other wildlife who are trying to catch some rays. These are dassies (yes, there are two – see the one peeking over the rock ledge?), rock hyrax, the closest living relative to the elephant. They’re about the size of a big housecat.












Let me close with a few photos of the daisy-like flowers from the area. Cape Daisies (Osteospermum) and Gazanias are two that can be bought at garden centers in the US.
I’ll deal with some of the more unusual flowers in a later journal edition.

Floyd

Springbok - Part 1

This will be part one of three or four or five, I haven’t decided yet. The overall series covers our late July trip north into Namaqualand for the late winter flower season. We did a similar journal last year and may accidently repeat some of the photos – but they are beautiful and bear repeating.

Part one will cover our trip to the lodge and our accommodations. Part two will cover the trip into Namaqua National Park. Part three will get heavily into plants and flowers. Part four, should that be necessary, will cover some of the critters seen. Part five will cover our trip to the coast and the DeBeers diamond mines.

It’s a 500km, 5.5 hour trip from Cape Town to Springbok. That’s if you don’t stop to take pictures. So it takes us a bit longer. The flower season varies depending on the weather and latitude. We were quite early in the season this year and the locals told us that the displays were “not so good.” You be the judge.




Most of the flowers are in the daisy family. There are a number of species on display and I won’t bore you with their names. Marshal sells some of them at Village Flower & Garden in Lisle (unpaid ad).





We stayed at this B&B in Springbok. Betsy is unpacking while I’m working the camera. Daisy was not new for us – we were there in 2008 as well. Nice digs, good people, nice landscaping.

Our “room” for this stay was the honeymoon cottage – fireplace, air conditioning, private patio, private braaii area, king-size bed – the works.




We were entertained by the resident showboat. We were much more impressed than the peahens. He did his best. Reminded me of my childhood and my grandfather’s collection of peafowl. Good memories.

There were also flocks of geese, guinea fowl and sacred ibis.





The Daisy Lodge is also in close proximity to the Geogap Nature Reserve. Geogap boasts beautiful sweeps of early spring flowers (we were too early), animals (another journal), one nice three-bedroom cabin (we’ll book into there sometime), an excellent stand of quiver trees (a variety of aloe), and a garden surrounding the visitors’ center containing some unusual specimens.





This guy, for instance, is about an inch tall.


And this friendly fellow.


There were flowers blooming in Geogap, just not the daisy varieties the area is most known for. This orchid-looking bloom appears a bit like our own toad lily (Tricyrtis).


I was intrigued by the appearance of this spring bulb (I think). It almost appears to be a candlestick in shape. I can theorize that the bulge is a food storage vehicle, but it’s only my theory.

That’s all for now. More of nature’s wonders on the next installment.

Floyd

In Search of Wild Gazanias - Success

Dear Friends and Family

In search of wild gazanias Floyd and I just spent five days in an area of South Africa called Namaqualand. Namaqualand can be found in the far northwest corner of South Africa bordering Namibia. It is the largest high mountainous desert in the world and each year in the spring 1400 varieties of flowers bloom. Because of the heavy rains here this year, the flowers started blooming in August and we were privileged to enjoy this wonderful spectacle.


We traveled the N7, north from Cape Town towards Namibia, and the farther north we went the more flowers we saw; purples, whites, yellows blended together. Then the colors changed. Our first day in the region we went into Namaqua National Park to an area called Skilpad, pronounced “skeel-pod”. Billions of orange flowers greeted us and tucked among them were termite mounds and other flowers of every hue.







This picture illustrates how the sheer mass of color changes across the landscape.

In the Namaqualand area there are three flowers zones. The flowers by the coast are different from those in the interior. Unfortunately the only way to see the ones by the coast is by 4X4 which we did not have, so next time.




The ones in the second zone include vygies and succulents. We were able to pay 20 rand to a local farmer and walk his field on what he called a succulent trail. There was an even more splendid array by the side of the road and in the local succulent nursery.


The third zone includes Skilpad and our favorite flower finding area, Goegap, which when pronounced starts with an H and then sounds like you are going to spit; the sound hop comes at the end. You have to think in German to get this one.


In the Goegap nature reserve, the flowers are magnificent. Purples, pinks, yellows, reds and oranges predominate. It is mountainous and craggy, with huge rocks perched on the hillsides and enormous valleys. The road into the mountain was sand based and much easier to drive than many of the other rocky dirt roads in the area.


















We spent a great deal of time trying to get a “good” picture of a quiver tree, and this is a favorite.



















When I look at these pictures now, it is interesting to note the light and dark differences. Part of that is due to the differences between Floyd’s and my cameras; the other because we went to Goegap on two days. One was brightly sunny without a cloud in the sky; the other rainy and cloudy. Nevertheless, the land was really beautiful both times.















But everything must end, including this note, so, as the sun sets on Geogap, bye for now.



















Oh, I should tell you, we did find wild gazanias and they were beautiful.








We will be back in the States soon. Until we see you, love to all.

Betsy