Picnicking at Harold Porter, and sighting penguins ...

Botanical Gardens

Harold Porter is a really pleas­ant sur­prise! In fact, it's one of the Cape's best kept secrets ...

I had for­got­ten just how gor­geous the drive from Cape Town to Betty's Bay along Clarence Drive, known also as Route 44, is. We were to visit friends in Somerset West in the even­ing and, since it looked as though the day would be clear, we ambi­tiously set off for the Harold Porter Botanical Garden, a long-delayed visit, one we had been mean­ing to make for too long.

Fortunately for us, des­pite road­works in Somerset West that could have turned our jour­ney into a com­plete misery (and threatened to on our return jour­ney, but that's an aside for later) we joined Clarence Drive where it skirts the west­ern end of the Hottentots Holland moun­tain range at Gordon's Bay with not even a minor hic­cough and vir­tu­ally no mut­ter­ings about rude drivers.

Harold Porter

Whilst the wind was gust­ing in Cape Town, Clarence Drive was rel­at­ively unaf­fected and we were encased in a seam­less cap­sule of blue seas, azure skies and breath­less moun­tain scenery. False Bay falls away down the rocky moun­tain side to your right, whilst fyn­bos clad moun­tains loom to your left. It's a para­disa­ical vista, one that eas­ily equals Chapman's Peak, but without the con­tinu­ous road clos­ures that dog the link between Hout Bay and Noordhoek.

As we left Gordon's Bay behind us there were peri­odic view­points en route where sev­eral cars at a time can safely pull off the road to drink in the views. I would ima­gine the road serves as a really good whale watch­ing area too, although the choppy waters below pre­ven­ted sight­ings on this occasion.

Clarence Drive is incred­ibly relax­ing, not only because of the obvi­ous beauty of your sur­rounds, but also more subtly because you can see your des­tin­a­tion con­stantly, where Hangklip Point stands sus­pen­ded, appear­ing to almost veer off in the other dir­ec­tion from the rest of the moun­tains on the east­ern shores of False Bay, giv­ing one a sense of containment.

Harold Porter

We passed through Rooi Els and Pringle Bay at Hangklip Mountain, without mis­hap. Betty's Bay always catches me by sur­prise. It is one of the most pretty and beau­ti­ful coastal parts of the Cape, not least because it lies, as does Harold Porter National Botanical Garden, within the Kogelberg Biosphere.

Kogelberg really is the heart of the floral king­dom in the Cape. Of the world's six floral king­doms, it is not only the smal­lest, but by far the richest. Size for size the 70 000 hec­tare Biosphere Reserve is home to the most com­plex biod­iversity on earth with 1 300 dif­fer­ent plant spe­cies per 10 000 square kilo­metres. Second on the list behind us lies the South American rain­forest, which brings to mind incred­ible beauty. Yet they have only 420 plant spe­cies per 10 000 square kilometres.

When one reads stats like this, it puts into per­spect­ive how spoilt we are, and how vulnerable!

It's inter­est­ing to note here that Biosphere Reserves are a fairly new concept. They are fence­less, so there is no wedge between nature and people. Whilst it is evid­ent that there are guidelines for build­ing within the Biosphere – Betty's Bay's houses are all sur­roun­ded by fyn­bos and the build­ings are not gar­gan­tuan – the focus is on liv­ing with nature so that our children's chil­dren will still have a healthy and sus­tain­able envir­on­ment in which to live.

Harold Porter

Harold Porter is a really pleas­ant sur­prise! In fact, it's one of the Cape's best kept secrets! Anyone in Cape Town who tries to go on a pic­nic at Kirstenbosch will vouch for how ridicu­lously busy it can get, par­tic­u­larly when the sum­mer sun­set con­certs start. Well, we've found an altern­at­ive. Sure, you have to drive for roughly an hour and a half to get there, but for the peace and serenity, and the incred­ible range of plants and the pretty gar­dens set right against Disa Kloof and Leopard's Kloof, it's worth it.

The gar­dens lie in a floral hot­spot, dom­in­ated by the sand­stone peaks of the Kogelberg (hence the name of the bio­sphere). They all set on a slight incline and from almost every­where in the garden, the sea is vis­ible. Simply put, the garden is heavenly.

There's a fairly new res­taur­ant at the entrance to the park where you can lunch, or you can pic­nic in the gar­dens them­selves under a tree. The garden is just the right size for a num­ber of people to have more than enough space to do their own thing and yet is com­pact enough to cir­cum­nav­ig­ate with ease, achieved within the space of an hour or two – depend­ing on how long you take to look at plants. There were a num­ber of avid pho­to­graph­ers out when we were there, for whom this was noth­ing short of a day's trip.

Harold Porter has a num­ber of reflec­tion ponds in which there were frogs and tad­poles, there is a wet­land eco­sys­tem right in the heart of the garden that is really worth a visit, as is the dune eco­sys­tem which gives one a real indic­a­tion of just how valu­able sand dunes are to beaches and their sur­rounds. Up in the north­ern reaches of the garden is a lime­stone fyn­bos and ren­osterveld eco­sys­tem that looks as if its paths have been made using crushed mother of pearl shells.

After a pic­nic and vari­ous for­ays through the garden, at a run for our son doesn't do things sed­ately, we had a little time to squash in a visit to Stony Point to see the pen­guins. For any vis­it­ors to Cape Town who have not man­aged to get to Boulders Beach, this is a won­der­fully relaxed (and not full of people) altern­at­ive. The entrance fee is nom­inal, and, like us, you might be lucky enough to hold a baby pen­guin found marooned in Hermanus, prob­ably taken there by a tide.

He was about to go off to SANCCOB where he will be rehab­il­it­ated and then set back in amongst his peers. Without his mother to look after him he wouldn't sur­vive. If you're inter­ested, you can adopt a pen­guin and help SANCCOB con­tinue the work they do for these vul­ner­able, likely to become endangered birds.

PS: there is an altern­at­ive to the N2 through Somerset West and its myriad robots – the con­tinu­ation of the R44, onto which we veered in a bid to cir­cum­nav­ig­ate the over­crowded N2 at the bot­tom of Sir Lowry's Pass.

Photo Credits:
Photographs used in this art­icle are all by derekkeats on Flickr.com (cre­at­ive com­mons license).

Useful Links:
Harold Porter Botanical Gardens
Bettys Bay Attractions
Things to Do in Bettys Bay
Bettys Bay Accommodation
Cape Overberg Accommodation