Spekboom enclosure

One of the spots in the Addo Elephant National Park where one can stretch your legs is the Spekboom enclosure.  After parking your car you enter the secure area and walk about 40 meters or so through the bush to a game viewing fence right by a waterhole.  The walk gives you the better insight on what the bush looks like from within.  Just imagine running down a game path like this looking over your shoulder at a 5 ton elephant bull crashing through the bush after you.  

Pin Cushion Protea

This 450 hectare Van Stadens Wildflower Reserve lies 40 km west of Port Elizabeth on the N2 to Cape Town. It is the best place near PE to see lowland fynbos with flowering Proteas and associated fynbos endemics. I used to stop there quite often in my tourist guiding days and there is always some kind of protea in bloom. In this case there were lots of pin cushion proteas in flower on this specific day I was there. The reserve is a bird watchers heaven with various walking trails covering the plateau and forested ravine.

Alien invaders

While we are in the area, we might as well take you along Marine Drive between Summerstrand and Schoenmakerskop. We featured the beacon the other day. If you travel away from town from there, you enter a Marine reserve, which, until recently, was covered with alien vegetation. However a concerted effort has been made to clear the Port Jackson Willows and now there are views across the dunes to the sea where you could previously only see scraggly bushes.

The Port Jackson, an Austalian plant, was originally introduced in the 19th Century to stabilise the dunes in the area. At the time, the city was under serious threat from encroaching sands, and the main streets were absolutely miserable with drifting swirling sand whenever the notorious coastal wind blew, so the willows were introduced to bind the dunes. But they became a problem, with no natural enemies, and took over large areas, and because they are very volatile plants, when there were fires, the heat destroyed all the indigenous vegetation totally. Eventually they were declared Noxious Weeds.It has cost a fortune to begin eradicating them, and is very labour intensive, but in this area at least, good progress has been made.