At the end of June 2005 we took a trip to Baviaanskloof, a wilderness area in the Eastern Cape. The trip was 1600 kms long with about 200 off road. We got there via the N2 up the coast as far as George and then turned in land to the Karoo. On the return journey we travelled across country to De Rust, Outdhoorn along the R62 to Montague, through the Robertson wine valley to Worcester then down the N1 back to Cape Town.
Luke was on school holidays and so we took along one of his friends Tom Scott, we also took along the two dogs, Baggie who was now 15 years old and Noah our 12 week old beorboel. So with our luggage we were pretty cramped even in a Range Rover.
We stopped at an isolated ostrich farm, called Verberg Safaris and Farm Stay. Which was very basic and very cold at night, but just R120 pppn. The family who owned the farm were very friendly as indeed was everyone we meet in this wild wilderness area. Having said it was cold at the night and in the mornings, that days were lovely and warm, with clear blue skies.
The farmers wife explained that it was two and half hours drive to the shops. I worked out that that would be half a tank of fuel in the car. That means if she filled up when she got to the shops, by the time she got home she would have just half a tank left. Just enough to get here back to the shops to fill up again. I guess all your friends have to live on the way to or from the shops.
We visited the nearby towns at various times, Uniondale, is a bit run down, but has a petrol station and a supermarket that sells good take away food. We treated ourselves to chips and samoas's. Willowmore is a very quiet one road town or Dorp as they call them here. It also had a supermarket and interesting antique shop, a very nice cafe bar and a bottle store.
On the way home along R62 we stopped at the world famous Ronnies Sex Shop. Luke and Tom were a little disappointed to find out it was a bar, having spent the 3 hours it took to get there having all sorts of ideas as to what it maybe.
Below is an article from Get Way Magazine, which inspired our visit to Baviaanskloof. All the photos are ours taken during our visit.
'If you want to get lost forever, try wandering into the wild mountains of Baviaanskloof. It has kloofs so weird they make the setting for the film Picnic at Hanging Rock look cosy. Most travelling-type South Africans have heard of it, but few would be able to locate it on a map. Don Pinnock tracked it down and
went . . . well . . . wild.'
It was still and hot. The type of heat that causes cattle to cluster under trees, sheep to stand in silly long lines using their neighbour’s rump as shade and birds to perch with their beaks wide open. Linden Booth was on his knees on the Cedar Guesthouse stoep surrounded by a photograph about as big as a king-size duvet made up of aerial shots stuck together with Prestik.
“We’re here,” he said, his finger on a tiny dot near the edge which was the roof of his farmhouse.
We were looking at the image of a vast, wild, virtually unpopulated and only partly explored river catchment system between Willowmore and Patensie in the Cape Province known – appropriately, given their numbers – as Baviaanskloof, valley of baboons. To the north of the Baviaans River are the mountains of the same name, to the south the Kouga Mountains and in between, like ham in a sandwich, are privately owned farms that hug the river for more than half its passage through the mountains. Cedar Kloof, my first port of call, was on one of these mountain-hugging farms.
“The water comes from the kloof at the back of the house,” Linden said. “It’s never failed. There’s a waterfall up there, I’ll take you tomorrow.”
The trip would take two and a half hours of hard hiking, but on the photograph it was a short, dark line. The rest of the huge photo looked like a black baking pan of rusks someone forgot to take out the oven. The sun sides of row after row of mountain ranges were wrinkled and convoluted; the shadowed sides ended in river-cut ravines from which the burnt dough seemed to have peeled back. Big, wild country.
There’s only one road through this tangle of river-sliced sandstone, part of it built in the 19th century by South Africa’s master pass builder Thomas Bain. Maybe because of the farmers, the dirt road through their section is good. The deeper you go into Baviaanskloof Reserve, however, the worse it becomes, much of it now accessible by 4x4 only.
But if you have a 4x4 this is an exhilarating playground, with the added value that you will have it almost to yourself for much of the year. To those who know it, these kloofs are their secret heaven.
Ancient mountainsAfter a night in the guesthouse (an old, converted farmhouse) and an indulgent breakfast provided by Linden and his wife, Jeanne, Linden led the way up behind the farmhouse, following a tea-coloured stream past ancient cedar trees. As in the Cedarberg further west, these crumple-skinned trees – the local species is known as Willowmore cedar (Widdringtonia schwarzii) – were hacked down by settlers. But in these deep kloofs the difficulty of extraction saved them, and they stand as sentinels to a forgotten world.
As the walls closed in we were obliged to wade in places and were eventually stopped by a waterfall plunging into a deep, inky pool. It was good for a swim; icy and swirling. But the cliff over which the water plunged thwarted my first attempt to penetrate the encircling bergs.
From Thomas Bain’s road through the Baviaans valley, the incised ramparts looked like the clawed paws of a sphinx – row after row of them. The illusion of paws was even more marked as my long-suffering Isuzu later hacked up a track along the muscular side of a berg in the company of Thys and Alice Cilliers, who own the beautiful Sederkloof Lodge.
Thys had offered to get me deeper into the mountains and soon the Baviaans River was a tangled thread far below us. Valley thicket gave way to protea-sprinkled fynbos guarded by proud but tatty aloe ferox sentinels. Up above Sederkloof Lodge the air was cool and clear, glittering in sunlight playing on rustling sprays of restios. The track ended at a cliff edge above a deep kloof which wove its way tantalisingly into the distance. Deep in its embrace was a relic cedar forest, secret and safe. Beyond, the far ranges smirked in their seemingly inaccessible isolation.
A man of the bush Next day I left the farming areas and entered the reserve over a cattle grid and plunged through a tunnel of green thicket, past an abandoned farmhouse – which begged to be photographed – and up a winding pass. From time to time kudu loped across the road and several baboons, sitting sentry, barked their warning. It was gloriously wild.
I was hunting for a small side track which led to the isolated home of the reserve’s section manager, Derek Clark. He’s something of a legend in these parts; a highly regarded ecologist who’s been living alone in the reserve with his dogs for 11 years. An old blues number was stirring the hot air as I entered his house and an electric guitar had pride of place in one room.
If anyone knows this wilderness, Derek does. “Where else can you buy a three-rand overnight permit and walk for 150 kilometres without seeing another living soul?” he demanded as he poured some rooibos tea.
“You get the brandy-and-Coke guys parking on the perimeter but almost nobody gets far from the road. Leopards are increasing, so are antelope and baboons ... don’t talk about baboons! There are things in there we don’t even know exist.”
Guiding some biologists one day he found a few conical snail shells and popped them in a cigarette box. Several years later he asked a passing biologist to ferry them to a snail boffin in Durban. A week later his phone and fax were going crazy: the snails had last been seen 150 years previously and were thought to be extinct. The expert hotfooted to the kloof and went home a happy man with 19 different snail species in his bag.
“Conservation’s not about preserving species,” was Derek’s parting shot. “It’s about protecting entire landscapes.” I overnighted in the Eastern Cape Parks Board’s timber chalets at Geelhoutbos – spare but comfortable – and headed up the inevitable kloof behind them. In places I had to wade through a stream between looming rock walls only a few metres apart, all the while being soundly scolded by a troop of baboons. I don’t find baboons scary, but the deeper I got the more agitated they became. So, eventually, the kloof’s protectors won and I turned back.
Geelhoutbos is surrounded by green lawns and a lush forest bustling with birds. As evening cooled the drowsy air, a pair of redwing starlings swooped overhead with titbits for their cheeping chicks and a large mountain tortoise ambled across the lawn outside the hut, munching contentedly. It seemed a good time to pull the cork from a bottle of red wine.
The valley has lots of fruit trees, this organge tree was full of fruit and Carol proved that her scrumping days were not over with
After Geelhoutbos the road deteriorated and climbed higher and higher along tight hairpin bends. From the crest of the pass (whose name appeared on no map) you can see bush-covered mountains stepping off to the horizon. The narrow road skirts some yawning drop-offs: a stupid move could plunge you hundreds of metres into thick riverine forest. Bain braced his roads with raw, uncemented stones. I wondered how long they’d stand the weight of trucks. So far, though, they’re holding.
From there the road unwinds you down muscular mountain flanks and deposits you at Rooihoek, which must be one of the most spectacular camp sites in Southern Africa. A beach of fine white sand dipped into the near-black Kouga River and on the other bank ruddy, striated cliffs soared upwards into a velvet-blue sky.
I pitched a tent, then sat in the river watching Egyptian geese honk their way down river. To swim in the cool river water in those surroundings is to inaugurate a lifelong yearning to return. It was a hard spot to leave.
A place of kudu Another pass with an even worse surface than the previous one – but great fun in a sturdy 4x4 – led to Bergplaas that is, as its name implies, an old farm which now consists of tumble-down stone kraals and an overnight camping hut. As I approached a large herd of red hartebeest watched idly, but bounded away when I slid out of the vehicle to try for a photograph. From the building a vague track penciled itself up the contours into the wilderness. Half a kilo-metre along, however, large rocks blocked further progress.
From Bergplaas the road traverses some beautiful, high-mountain fynbos, then swoops down into riverine forest, an area known as Poortjies for the many stream crossings. Across a cattle grid was a shock of orange orchards and the doef doef of water pumps: back in a pocket of farming country. I overnighted at the Wilderness Foundation Guesthouse – it’s an organisation supervising the expansion and protection of the reserve in partnership with Eastern Cape government departments – and next morning was taken into the Goede Hoop section of Baviaanskloof by their conservation planning officer, Andrew Skowno. We kicked up dust across a valley floor that was pure Karoo, then up a wooded kloof named Haas-poort. Everywhere you looked there were kudu, which radared us with their outsize ears but didn’t run.
Andrew followed the Grootrivier, splashing through many reed-crowded drifts. It seemed we could go on forever, but Andrew had business to attend to so we turned back. This was proving a difficult wilderness to penetrate.
Over lunch I stared at an Ordinance Survey map of the area and spotted a road that seemed promising. I consulted my Isuzu double-cab and we agreed its gutsy diesel was up to the task. So as the heat finally dipped below the thirties later that afternoon, I scooted down the road towards Patensie then up a dirt track that climbed over Stuurman’s Kop and into the purple mountains.
A thunderstorm was pouring water over the Groot Winterhoek Mountains as I turned onto a jeeptrack marked on the map with a little 4x4 symbol. It was right about that. The rough track led deeper and deeper into the high bergs until a huge peak named Cockscomb hove into view – 1758 metres according to the map and the highest point in the region. Eventually there was nothing between me and the peak but a yawning valley. On every side, to the horizon, were mountains and valleys with not a single sign of humanity. I got out and sat on a rock – for a long time – feeling the grandeur and solitude. Lightning flashed across the Cockscomb and I was probably the only person who saw it.
Unbidden, a line from the Native-American Chief Seattle popped into my head: “Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.” A peal of thunder applauded.
A KINGDOM'S TREASURE
Because of its uniqueness, the Cape Floral Kingdom is listed as one of the world’s 25 ‘biodiversity hot-spots’. But it’s under threat. Almost 25 per cent of the kingdom’s natural habitat has been destroyed, mainly by agriculture, and 1 435 plant and 112 animal species have a Red Data Book listing, meaning they’re threatened with extinction.
For this reason Baviaanskloof, locked away in relative isolation, is a treasure. At last species count there were 1 161 plants, around 50 larger mammals, 310 birds including booted, crowned, black, fish and martial eagles, 56 reptiles, 55 butterflies, 15 fishes and the most diverse vegetation types in the Cape Kingdom. It’s also where Bushmen hunter-gatherers, Bantu-speaking Iron Age pastoralists and European colonists met. In caves all over is beautiful rock art, with much more undoubtedly still undiscovered.
FACTS, HIGHS & LOWS
Highest and lowest road point: 1 150 metres and 100 metres.
Highest peak: Cockscomb 1 758 metres.
Area: 250 square kilometres – but soon to be extended to 500 square metres.
Recorded species: Plants 1 161; larger mammals 46; birds 310.
Most beautiful stretch: The pass to Bergplaas.
Most beautiful camp site: Rooihoek.
Most spectacular sight: A thunderstorm across Cockscomb Peak.
Most interesting roadside accommodation: Makkedaat Grot cave cottage.
Most romantic accommodation: The rock and glass lodges overlooking a deep valley at Sederkloof.
Tastiest meal: Shared between breakfast at Cedar Guest house and dinner at Sederkloof Lodge.
Scariest experience: The narrow pass east of Geelhoutbos.
Funkiest shop: Tolbos Coffee Shop in Patensie.
AN ANCIENT HISTORY
Baviaanskloof is the eastern wing of the Cape Folded Mountains, which began life as sea sand that was compressed into quartzitic sandstone layers along the rim of a vast inland sea around 450 million years ago, when Africa was still part of Gondwanaland.
When this super landmass began breaking up some 200-million years later, coinciding with a period of high rainfall, the sandstone was ground down and scored into the deep valleys.
Today the area contains elements of six of South Africa’s seven biomes – montaine grasslands, valley thicket, savanna, forests, arid shrublands and fynbos. The transition is sometimes so sudden you have to be sharp to see it.
KEEPING IT REALLY WILD
Baviaanskloof is presently nearly a quarter of a million hectares, but there are plans to double this over the next few years. Although largely unknown to most South Africans, it has beengranted World Heritage Site status, one of several areas in the Western Cape representing the Cape Floral Kingdom.
It is also about to be declared a wilderness area, which has a greater meaning than being merely wild. Such an area is defined as uninhabited, having no lasting human structures, being large enough to give a feeling of solitude, have all human activities concealed from sight or hearing and not be ‘managed’ in any way. Flights overhead should have a minimum height restriction.
South Africa has been a leader on the African continent in this type of conservation. This is largely because of wilderness pioneers such as Ian Player who created the Wilderness Leadership School, Bill Bainbridge of the Wilderness Action Group and Wilderness Foundation director Andrew Muir. It’s the only African country to make provision for the protected category ‘Wilderness Area’ in its legislation.
Baviaanskloof is not yet a declared wilderness area, but is well on its way to becoming one. A coalition of NGOs and the Eastern Cape Parks Board are co-operating to expand its borders to half a million hectares and ensure it remains pristine for future generations to enjoy.
Every night was Braai night, not just as it was the only method of cooking, although thats a good enough reason, but because it was so cold.
Ostrich's and more ostrich's everywhere you looked. Although on our trip we also saw baboons, springbok, elan and kudu. The area has none of the big 5 and so is very safe, except for the baboons which have massive teeth and I suspect could cause you a few problems, but thankfully they are no used to humans feeding them and so keep there distance.
Ratanga Junction, is an amusement park and billed as the wildest place in Africa, a high claim indeed. Its just off the N1 about 40 minutes from Hout Bay, and inside the massive Century City complex which houses the largest shopping mall in Africa, Canal Walk. The mall is actually very close to Ratanga Junction and can be walked to in about 5 minutes. 
