Take one World Heritage Site

On a perfect day. Blue sky. A fresh breeze, not cold. Just you and I here, walking. No sound, but the sand crunching under our boots. If we pause … we can hear the heritage of world murmuring past our ears.

Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area
with new roads using gabions

I was very wary of what we would find, after eighteen months of roadworks. Oh! Tarred road! And a gate. But, new signs. A World Heritage Site, and for the hours we walked, we were quite alone.
We had it ALL to ourselves. Where the road dips, and had been washed out, there are now fords. The road is paved with open permeable concrete blocks. On either side, gabions. Wire cages filled with rocks. Beyond the road works, bare soil, but they mostly worked just on one side of the road. The Other Side is now lush and green. In time the gabions will collect soil and seeds. Already they begin to green over.

Walking in the Groot Winterhoek

Our first rain has begun to cut the new channel down to the stream, in the valley between us and the distant mountain. Clear cold water, which will find its way down through and over the rock. To the Voelvlei dam for the city of Cape Town. This is both a water catchment area, and a wilderness area.

After fire, comes the green
The sandstone crumbles to fierce white quartzite sand

Fynbos is adapted to fire. Above ground, sculptural dead limbs. The Protea bush is a dead skeleton, but from the roots comes the ‘next generation’. After the fire, the seedheads open and scatter billows of seed. Many fynbos plants are adapted to only germinate their seed after fire. When there is space for a seedling to stake a claim.

The grasses, the restios, and the sprouting Protea

Willdenowia a restio

And on the ground humongous vibrant green growth. The revegatation is gold and maroon and silver. Restios and grasses have reclaimed their world, before they get shaded out by Protea bushes.

Nerine or Hessea cinnamomea? Erica sp.
Oxalis sp.

Protea neriifolia
the same species we saw driving up the pass

The air is like champagne. Our mediterranean climate doesn’t bring us crisp revitalising air, but up on the mountain, is different. Here there will be frost and snow in winter. And it’s pink champagne, for all the flowers are pink today. Oxalis, (Nerine or Hessea cinnamomea? which flowers prolifically after fires, but not in cultivation), Erica and Protea.

Klipspringer in the Groot Winterhoek

Male, female
the pair together
See how the klipspringer dances on tiptoe?

We used not to see animals here, but today we saw 3 klipspringer, a grey rhebok and a troop of baboons. Teenagers and little bitty babies, with toddlers weaving in between. One mother trying to coax her dead baby back to life. And the last member of the troop. Walking on his hind legs (like us) because his front legs seemed to be just stumps. Trailing behind, unable to move as fast as the others.

Troop of baboons in the road

Young baboon sentry

Here, one of the young males, on scout duty in the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area. Open to visitors again.

We who live with a climate and plants, as in Crestridge San Diego, where fire is a part of the cycle of life, know both the horror of waiting for the flames to die, the smoke to disperse, the embers to cease glowing, even underground. And the joy of nature’s response to the first grateful gentle rain. Come up the Dasklip Pass and thru the Berghoff Protea farm to see.

PS World Heritage Site of UNESCO Cape Floral Region Protected Areas

Pictures by Diana and Jurg

words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville,

near Cape Town in South Africa

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink.

Those are my links)