The Cederberg

Many people remem­ber being a teen­ager with a fond, misty, sen­ti­mental look on their face. I for one am lucky to crack a grim­ace at some of the down­right out­rageous things I got up to dur­ing those years. Like the time my friends and I decided to go camp­ing in the Cederberg.

At the end of high-school, instead of head­ing to Plettenberg Bay, the age-old venue for school-leaving parties, we thought beat the com­mer­cial crowds and head straight to the heart of the wil­der­ness to live rough, drink hard and come back laugh­ing at the herds who had frittered away their first taste of post-school free­dom in a lame little hol­i­day town.

As it turns out, the joke was kinda on us. Certain things are high on the list of pri­or­it­ies. Making sure that all your tent poles are packed is not one of them.Tell this to a teen­ager and they'll scoff. As it turns out you can't pitch a tent with two poles miss­ing, as we found out that week­end. Which left us sleep­ing out in the open. This was great the first night, but when it star­ted rain­ing on the second, tem­pers star­ted to flair. After much swear­ing and moan­ing, we mira­cu­lously found a cave for shel­ter. In fact, my most beau­ti­ful memory of the Cederberg is fall­ing asleep in that cave, listen­ing to a water­fall cas­cad­ing nearby and wak­ing up with nature in all her awe­some splend­our, where the silence is so pure you can hear it, feel it and see it. Which didn't pre­vent me from get­ting a nasty bout of flu from sleep­ing the rain.

The Cederberg area lies some 200km north west of Cape Town, and con­sists of the moun­tains from which the area takes its name, the wil­der­ness it hides, and sev­eral small towns. To reach the first of these towns, Citrusdal, one passes over the beau­ti­ful Piekinierskloof Pass, where farm­ers share the land with resorts and tour­ist accom­mod­a­tion.

As you con­tinue through the pass, you see the small town of Citrusdal, laid out in the val­ley, and look­ing for all the world like a pic­ture post­card. This area is fam­ous for it’s cit­rus grow­ing, which is exactly where Citrusdal got it’s name, but also for that uniquely South African tea, Rooibos. In the heart of the Cederberg range, you find the farms that are world fam­ous for grow­ing the best Rooibos Tea on the planet. The unique cli­mate of the moun­tain range is the secret to this health tea that have cre­ated a pros­per­ous farm­ing community.

While a visit to this town, and the other small towns in the area will provide many attrac­tions, and tour­ists will be charmed by the friendly loc­als and old world feel, most who visit this area do so for the wil­der­ness itself, as well as the out­door activ­it­ies and sports that are on offer.

Hikers and climbers flock to the area every year, to visit such fam­ous nat­ural land­marks as the Wolfsberg Arch, Wolfberg Cracks and Maltese Cross. Natural rock form­a­tion, born from eons of erosion by wind and rain. There are not many places in the world where you can see rock form­a­tions that date back between 500 and 345 mil­lion years. The Bokkevled Group boats rich mar­ine fossil depos­its with bra­chi­o­pods, trilob­ites and crin­oids that are all pro­tec­ted by law and may not be dis­turbed or removed. Some of the fam­ous rock form­a­tions are the Wolfberg Cracks and Arch, the Stadsaal Caves and the Maltese Cross.

Within the wil­der­ness area, a nation­ally pro­tec­ted park, one can view indi­gen­ous San rock art, left by the earli­est human inhab­it­ants of the area, or exper­i­ence the fam­ous rock climb­ing sites at Krakadouw and Tafelberg peaks, to name a few. The animal life is var­ied with rock rab­bits, klipspring­ers, baboons, por­cu­pines, badgers, lynx, Wild Cat and Cape fox. The leo­pard is a pro­tec­ted spe­cies here; you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of this elu­sive big cat.

While the area is run by Cape Nature con­ser­va­tion, there are sev­eral camp­sites in the area, the main one being Algeria, but oth­ers, such as Krom River and Jamaka, the lat­ter of which are two of the privately run options.

Also on offer is the local ama­teur astro­nom­ical obser­vat­ory, 4 x 4 trails or a visit to Heuningvlei, a vil­lage run by the Moravian Church, which owns a large por­tion of the area, and where one can pur­chase loc­ally made leather shoes and boots, visit the herb garden or stay in the back­pack­ers. Another attrac­tion at Heuningvlei is a don­key cart ride through the moun­tains, on a pur­pose built track, largely inac­cess­ible by more mod­ern means.

Many lodges and resorts have also sprung up in the area, for example the four star Mount Ceder Lodge, for those who wish to visit the area, without rough­ing it.A visit to the area in the spring time offers another nat­ural attrac­tion – the bloom­ing of the wild flowers in August and September, a sight which car­pets the nor­mally green area with colour.

As with most areas in the Western Cape, wine tast­ing at the award win­ning estate in the Olifants river val­ley is on offer, albeit in a spec­tac­u­lar nat­ural set­ting. All in all the area has much to offer the eco tour­ist, as well as those look­ing for a rest­ful, relax­ing get­away, far from the hustle of bustle of cit­ies and towns, where time seems slower, and there’s noth­ing more stress­ful than decid­ing what adven­ture to explore each day. Just check you’ve packed everything before you leave.

Useful Links:
More des­tin­a­tion inform­a­tion at:
Cape Nature Conservation
Clanwilliam Wild Flower Show
Clanwilliam Accommodation
Citrusdal Accommodation