The Cape Leopard Trust — small cats with big problems

Dr Quinton Martins, the man behind The Cape Leopard Trust, has seen only seven ad hoc sight­ings of wild leo­pards in the Cederberg where his research takes place in eight years. Even with col­lars, he sees but a few each year. The Cape Leopard is a vul­ner­able, isol­ated pop­u­la­tion that occurs at low dens­ity in the moun­tains of the Northern, Eastern and Western Cape. Due to the influ­ence of European set­tlers over the past 350 years, it has already been made extinct in many areas where it used to roam. As the trust head­lines in its adverts to raise aware­ness: Leopards of the Cape are small cats with BIG prob­lems ... Continued

I ♥ Biedouw Valley Because ...

I ♥ Biedouw Valley

Hi, I’m Andrea from Enjo Nature Farm in the Biedouw Valley, Cederberg.

Biedouw Valley IS BEST KNOWN FOR its incred­ible land­scape and spring flowers.

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN on Hoek se Berg, with impress­ive moun­tain form­a­tion.
THE BEST val­ley PICTURES CAN BE TAKEN AT the Biedouw Valley Amphitheatre.

OTHER HAPPY SNAPS AT Enjo swim­ming dam with sun­downer in between the moun­tains and bird nests over the water.

WHEN THE WEATHER'S GOOD, I LIKE TO swim and hike.
WHEN THE WEATHER'S BAD, I LIKE TO relax and cuddle in a cosy cot­tage with moun­tain view. Continued

I ♥ Citrusdal Because ...

I ♥ Citrusdal

Hi, I’m Anyas from Olifantsrus Farm Guest House and Olifantsrus Self Catering in Citrusdal in the Western Cape.

Citrusdal IS BEST KNOWN FOR being the gate­way to the Cederberg and for its cit­rus fruits of course!

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AT Wupperthal, a pic­tur­esque mis­sion vil­lage where excel­lent vel­skoen (known through­out the coun­try) are made and tobacco is dried and worked into rolls (roltabak). The other main products of the area are dried fruit, dried beans and rooibos tea. At Christmas time there is a fest­ival of carol singing at the mis­sion and the moun­tains echo to the voices of the people of Wupperthal. This is a place rich in cul­ture, his­tory and hos­pit­al­ity. Continued

The Baths in Citrusdal

The Baths, Citrusdal

We spent a few hours at The Baths in Citrusdal dur­ing December – it’s a huge prop­erty with accom­mod­a­tion and the Baths boasts hot and cold swim­ming pools, rock pools, private baths, hik­ing trails, moun­tain bik­ing and bird watch­ing!  There is also a shop for pur­chas­ing odds and ends and a fully licensed res­taur­ant if you don’t feel up to cook­ing dur­ing your week­end or hol­i­day away.

The his­tory of the baths date way back to 1739 when it was sug­ges­ted that a mil­it­ary post be built on the farm with the warm baths... Continued

De-Lovely and The Grapevine in Citrusdal

De-Lovely

Citrusdal is a sweet little town and what adds to that sweet­ness is a gift shop called De-Lovely and the simply sub­lime The Grapevine cof­fee shop.  Run by a mother and daugh­ter team, De-Lovely and The Grapevine are found next door to each other at 30 Voortrekker Street.

We vis­ited on a scorch­ing hot day (as only the Cederberg can be in late December) and The Grapevine, with its green and white striped decor and white fur­niture was a cool oasis.  I love the long, nar­row framed black­boards down either side of the fire place and the inter­est­ing paint tech­niques on the walls ... Continued

Hebron — an oasis at the pinnacle of the Piekenierskloof pass

Hebron

There is some­thing about trav­el­ling that brings with it an ele­ment of the mundane. I'm talk­ing about that glazed eyes feel­ing one begins to emit after an hour or two in the car so that even when faced with the incred­ible beauty of a pass like the Piekenierskloof, which marks the entrance to the Cederberg and Olifants River Valley (isn't it slightly freaky the way the river flows the wrong way?), and which wends its way down to the town of Citrusdal, you remain slightly impervious.

To call the Piekenierskloof Pass, which links Piketberg with Citrusdal on the N7, stun­ning is to do it a dis­ser­vice. In real­ity it is a series of rather daunt­ing twists and turns that over­look a patch­work quilt of multi-coloured farm fields, beau­ti­ful blue moun­tain ranges in the dis­tance. In days gone by there weren't any wheat fields down  below one, and most of what you see would have been Renosterveld ... Continued

Clanwilliam — rooibos, veldskoene, Tolla, and the living landscape project

Clanwilliam Tourist Info

We wander quietly into Clanwilliam on a par­tic­u­larly hot day, our air con­di­tion­ing turned up full (not great for my green street cred, but what's one to do when it's this hot?). The main street is busy. But then it always seems to be, what with the new and huge Spar to the right of us, and the myriad his­tor­ical build­ings oppos­ite it that make up one of the major charms of the pretty town.

I'm busy rat­tling off from a bro­chure about the many attrac­tions in Clanwilliam — great place to be dur­ing flower sea­son, the Clanwilliam dam offers a space for water sports, there is hik­ing (Clanwilliam lies at the feet of the Cederberg range of moun­tains and their pres­ence adds an extra some­thing to the town), rooibos is farmed here, as is cit­rus, and there are farms to visit, it is fam­ous for its 'veld­skoene' (there is a fact­ory you can visit), out­door activ­it­ies such as moun­tain bik­ing, 4X4 routes, quad bik­ing and horse rid­ing abound, and it's only two hours' drive from Cape Town. Bonus. Continued

Citrusdal – town of endless citrus orchards

Citrusdal Tourism

Pretty Citrusdal is hot. And it is the height of orange sea­son, so the air is rent with the pun­gence of really sweet cit­rus flowers – no guesses about where the town's name ori­gin­ated as it's sur­roun­ded by cit­rus farms. The little coun­try vil­lage is pop­u­lar with Capetonians, who head out here at any time of the year for week­ends not least because it lies right in the heart of the Cederberg Wilderness on the banks of the Olifants River, but also because it takes but a couple of hours to drive here.

Petrus Smith, who has taken on the Rasta name of Naphtal, which I think means 'green', wears his hair in an astound­ing hat. He is quiet, unas­sum­ing but eager to tell me about his stud­ies in busi­ness that allowed him to take on his pos­i­tion dur­ing the hol­i­days at the local tour­ism office ... Continued

The Olifants River Valley — a stay in Vredendal

Olifants River Valley

The most amaz­ing sur­prise for me was see­ing the expanse of grapev­ines along the banks of the Olifants River. These begin just out­side Clanwilliam and con­tinue for miles like a great, green swathe on either side of the river.

I had read about the Olifants River Valley as a wine-producing area. I was pre­pared, in a way, but the actual evid­ence is non­ethe­less unex­pec­ted. Huge dia­ducts guide water to vari­ous parts of the wine  farms that grace the banks of the river and palm trees are aplenty. I think it is the sheer auda­city at this amount of green in an area that is pre­dom­in­anty dry and arid that gets me. Continued

Ride the Cederberg Heritage Route in a donkey cart — a clean, green break

Cederberg Heritage Route

A friend of mine on Facebook, Jeremy Smith, has co-written a fant­astic Rough Guide called Clean Breaks – 500 New Ways to See the World. He's also an editor of Big Picture TV and the founder of the web­site www.ivili.org that pro­motes innov­a­tions from around the world for sus­tain­able liv­ing — filled with a host of unique ideas people have come up with, like a bicycle powered water pump, turn­ing trash bags into toys, port­able classrooms for nomads in Ethiopia and float­ing solar powered schools in Bangladesh.

But this blog is not about my 'friends' on FB, des­pite the fact that Jeremy's an all-round good guy. What is inter­est­ing about his book is that one of the clean breaks he has selec­ted, given that he and co-author Richard Hammond had the whole world to choose from, is the Cederberg Heritage Route ... Continued

De Pakhuys in Clanwilliam — a weekend away in the Cederberg

De Pakhuys

With all the long week­ends in April, we decided to take advant­age and head up the west coast, a route often less busy than the N1 or N2 as a get­away from Cape Town. Our des­tin­a­tion was de Pakhuys, a rus­tic guest farm just north of Clanwilliam in the Cederberg.

Having com­pleted our 3,5 hour jour­ney, we were housed in Blokhuys, which is one of four houses on the prop­erty. Blokhuys con­tains two small bed­rooms, with two single beds in each, and a smallish lounge/kitchen area with another single bed. For a fam­ily of  two adults and two chil­dren, it worked well, but I would not have liked to try and squash five into our little ‘huys’! Fortunately there was a lovely stoep onto which we spilled to have our meals, and a braai area, com­plete with won­der­ful sun­set views, which made for a rest­ful end to our day ... Continued

Camping and excitement are not mutually exclusive at Beaverlac

Rock Pools

Fed up with crowded Cape Town city clubs and even more crowded out­door parties, we decided to take things down a notch this New Year's by head­ing to Beaverlac. Beaverlac, just over the Dasklip Pass near Porterville, is a little gem of a camp­site about 2-and-a-half hours out­side of Cape Town.

Spending New Year's Eve in the tran­quil sur­rounds of a camp­site on the Grootfontein farm might sound too staid for some people. Many people want buzz and excite­ment to usher in the start of the new and the end of the old. Turns out camp­ing and excite­ment are not neces­sar­ily mutu­ally exclus­ive ... Continued

Back to basics at Beaverlac

Beaverlac

Last week­end I suc­cumbed to peer pres­sure and went camp­ing.  I did a 39 day trip through Africa at the begin­ning of 2000 and after camp­ing for most of those 38 nights I vowed I would never, ever camp again!  But the group invite for a week­end away was sent and I don’t like to miss out ... so I saw the inside of a tent again.

Our des­tin­a­tion was Beaverlac in the Cederberg and my good­ness it is beau­ti­ful.  The entire jour­ney was less than three hours includ­ing miss­ing a few turnoffs on the way out of the Mother City and the bath­room break so it’s a com­pletely do-able trip for after work on a Friday. Continued

Affordable Cederberg weekends

My slight obses­sion with Bushmen Rock Art and the con­stant search for it on trips to the Western Cape Mountains, res­ul­ted in the neces­sity to find afford­able week­end accom­mod­a­tion near Clanwilliam, which is about 2 and a half hours north of Cape Town on the N7. Not inter­ested in resid­ing in the town, and want­ing some­where quieter, I man­aged to loc­ate two won­der­ful spots on the bor­der of the Cederberg Wilderness Area in the Boskloof Valley Continued

Cederberg Photographs

Our pho­too­graphs today were taken in the Cederberg in the Olifants River Valley of the Western Cape. The Cederberg is a wil­der­ness area dom­in­ated by a craggy moun­tain range and a nature reserve that stretches from the Middelberg Pass at Citrusdal to just north of the Pakhuis Pass at Clanwilliam — over 70,000 hec­tares of spec­tac­u­lar, rugged ter­rain — roughly two to three hours’ drive from Cape Town ... Continued