Namaqualand Flower Route

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The rest of my days in Cape Town were filled with visiting recommended spots for food and beverages as you saw in a few pics last post. Preparing is what I was up to. Preparing for the reason for my timeline of coming to Africa when I did…The Namaqualand Flower route is what I am looking forward to journeying on in search for vast fields of wildflowers. Whats this all about you ask? Well let me tell you…Imagine traveling down a road nothing curious about anything and then all of a sudden past one side of a mountain and in the valley is nothing but millions of beautifully glorious wild flowers blanketing the ground soaking up the South African sun. A myriad of colors adorns the bottom of what seems to be a picturesque painting that only the greats like Renois could conceive. Oh…and to top off this array of purples, oranges, reds, whites, blues, pinks, etc…happens to be wild ostriches running around enjoying the abundance of easily accessible nourishment that is produced during this short short time of year. I rented a car for 2 weeks to make the trek 400 kilometers away to start in the north and work my way back down south as the flowers are more visible from that direction. Unfortunately on this solo mission I failed to find a travel partner but there were about 3 radio stations that sort of came in to keep me company for the 10 hour driving days I put in. My first destination in Skilpad I learned a fun fact: this week is free entrance to all national parks in SA…except Namaqualand NP….damnit…the other fun fact I learned is that the “season” for the flowers to pop is only two months long aaaaaaaaand apparently this season was a weird one due to rains coming early and then being fairly dry the rest of the time. What does that mean for me? Blurg is what that means…the flowers aren’t around anymore. The people were charging an arm and a leg to pitch a tent for the evening in that park so I decided to head to a small town and spend the night in a caravan park quite nicely priced. So I went all the way north to find out the flowers weren’t there but possibly further south. South I went for the next stop in a town called Darling. There were no flowers yet again, but there was a Darling Brewery to visit and I definitely enjoyed sampling their beers and reading their marketing strategy on how to promote each unique beverage. Hehehe. The next day I went to the West Coast National Park to search yet again for these elusive plants…and then found out some more fun news; the free entrance to all the parks in SA are for South Africans only…cheese and rice….BUT there was a line of cars behind me waiting to get in and I may have influenced the guard to let me through as a saffa. Sorted! Hehehe…This place was a fun difference to the last few days as there WERE some flowers around!!! But I had more fun driving around watching tortoises cross the road and stopping at the green stop sign. Plus the sights such as some bays and birds were fun to look at too. After quite a long journey I finally got to see a small glimpse of what the wonder of these flowers can produce. Not only that, I got to see an ostrich munching away in the veld. The scale was about 1/10^th of what it was supposed to be, but oh well, life goes on. Goal sort of accomplished!

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