The Rough Guide to Game Parks of South Africa (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Author:Rough Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, South Africa
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2020-03-17T04:57:54+00:00

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NATURE’S VALLEY SEEN FROM THE OTTER TRAIL

The Western Cape

Table Mountain National Park

West Coast

Western Karoo

The Overberg

The Garden Route

The Western Cape

The most mountainous and arguably the most beautiful of South Africa’s provinces, the Western Cape also attracts more foreign tourists than any other, thanks to the beguiling presence of Cape Town, with its extraordinary seaside setting at the base of Table Mountain, and the Bacchanal delights of the nearby winelands. Ecologically, Africa’s most southerly province is practically synonymous with the Cape Floristic Region, which is the smallest of the world’s six floral kingdoms, dominated by a low scrubby cover of fynbos, whose exceptional level of botanical diversity and endemism includes roughly six thousand plant species found nowhere else in the world. The province is also home to a large number of endemic fynbos-associated birds and large mammals, and a rich marine fauna that includes whales, dolphins, great white sharks, seals and penguins.

Paradoxically, while Cape Town stands as possibly the busiest tourist hub in Africa, and its environs form an important centre of global biodiversity, the WESTERN CAPE offers little in the way of mainstream game-viewing options. True, its twenty-plus provincial reserves and half-dozen national parks incorporate some of the most scenic locations anywhere in the country, but none could be considered conventional safari destinations. And while a scattering of private sanctuaries now offers visitors a quick-fix Big Five experience, these tend to be rather small and to lack the wilderness feel of more expansive counterparts elsewhere in the country.

Fortunately, what the Western Cape lacks in terms of conventional safari destinations, it compensates for with some superb opportunities for more specialized wildlife watching. The marine fauna, for instance, is scintillating. Within easy day-tripping distance of Cape Town, you can swim with penguins at Boulders Bay, boat out to Duiker Island and its breeding colony of Cape fur seals, and enjoy what is arguably the world’s best land-based whale-watching from the cliffs around Hermanus. Various antelope and other ungulates might be encountered in the Cape of Good Hope sector of Table Mountain National Park, as well as in the more far-flung Karoo National Park, Bontebok National Park and De Hoop Nature Reserve. The province is also an important centre of endemism for fynbos-associated birds, most notably the spectacular protea-loving Cape sugarbird, and a variety of reptiles and frogs unique to this habitat. And for those not heading further afield to more recognized safari regions such as the Kruger, KwaZulu-Natal or the Eastern Cape, private reserves such as Sanbona and Gondwana form a more than adequate substitute when it comes to Big Five game-viewing.

Table Mountain National Park

Tokai Manor House, Tokai Road (park admin) 021 712 0527, sanparks.org/parks/table_mountain

Gazetted in 1998, the 220-square-kilometre Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) incorporates more than seventy percent of the Cape Peninsula, the mountainous sliver of land that extends some 60km south from Cape Town to the wave-battered cliffs of Cape Point. Inscribed as part of UNESCO’s Cape Floral Region World Heritage Site in 2004, the park itself is a rather disjointed

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