The Postberg Flower Trail

Hiking isn’t everybody’s thing – it cer­tainly wasn’t mine. While I fully appre­ci­ate the beauty of nature, I didn’t think I needed to endure a hot, sweaty uphill slog to get a good look at it  (I can appre­ci­ate it just fine from the foot of the moun­tain thanks, it’s quite pleas­ant down here, really.) Who knew hik­ing needn’t be a les­son in phys­ical endur­ance? Who knew it could lit­er­ally be a walk in the park.

For me, the turn­around came with a team-building exer­cise (read: day off work) in the West Coast National Park. We were off to explore the Postberg Flower Trail, a sec­tion of the park that is open for only a couple months of the year (August to September) dur­ing the spring flower­ing sea­son. It’s a small win­dow of oppor­tun­ity that has walk­ing enthu­si­asts clam­our­ing for the lim­ited num­ber of day or full week­end passes avail­able — and now I know why ...

After man­aging to get slightly lost within the first half hour of walk­ing (entirely our own lack of nav­ig­a­tional prowess; the path is in fact very decently marked), we puff our way up the only steep­ish incline of the day, stop­ping to sur­vey the views with a cup of tea and a snack from our dili­gently pre­pared packs (sup­plies are abso­lutely neces­sary, unless you plan on eat­ing the scenery, which is frowned upon). And what a view.

The land­scape is strewn with multi-hued wild flowers nestled in the abund­ant fyn­bos that car­pets most of the reserve and stretches on either hori­zon to meet the azure waters of the Langebaan Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s pristine, undis­turbed nature as far as the eye can see, and we’re a hand­ful of the max­imum twenty people who will be allowed to enjoy it today.

As we con­tinue our way through sil­ver topped grasses — doing that cool thing grass does in the wind where, from a dis­tance, it looks like flow­ing water — we are watched some­what inquis­it­ively by a herd of assor­ted ante­lope; tiny spring­bok, long-limbed gems­bok and some­thing huge kneel­ing in the grass that could be a kudu or a camel, it’s hard to tell. Other wild­life sight­ings of the day include a leth­ar­gic cobra and four wilde­beest racing each other across the slopes and look­ing for all the world like they’re just hav­ing fun in the old nature reserve.

The flowers are already past their prime accord­ing to those in the know, but they’re breath­tak­ing non­ethe­less. Though my own floral lex­icon only extends to ‘orange flower’ and ‘purple flower’, I’m lucky enough to be with people who know the dif­fer­ence, and can point out any spe­ci­mens that my city eyes have missed. Swathes of col­our sur­round us, and even if you don’t know your steen­bok­bos from your Namakwa daisy, it’s hard not to be swept away by the sheer beauty of them all.

We stop for lunch and a quick siesta at one of the reserve’s postcard-perfect, windswept beaches, the crash­ing Atlantic remind­ing us of that wild qual­ity that makes the West Coast just so majestic­ally beau­ti­ful. The path con­tin­ues along another stretch of beach, back over another fynbos-encrusted hill and along the path back to the gate, the car and home.

If you’d told me a month ago I’d be doing a five-hour (exclud­ing stops), 14-km hike through a nature reserve and lov­ing every minute of it, I’d have told you you had the wrong per­son. But I’m con­ver­ted. Stiff, sore and sun­burnt, I’d do it again tomor­row (or maybe just as soon as my legs have recovered).

Contact details:
Bookings opens in June, con­tact num­bers: +27 (0)22 707‑9902 or +27 (0)22 707‑9903.

Useful Links:
Cape West Coast
Cape west Coast accom­mod­a­tion
Things to Do in Langebaan
Langebaan accom­mod­a­tion

Photographs taken in the West Coast National Park