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Fantasy meets Fact: the Garden Route National Park
With almost no fanfare, the Garden Route National Park was proclaimed on 6 March 2009, protecting ancient forest, fynbos and sea.
Saul Barnard, the hero of Daleen Matthee’s commanding novel, Circles in a Forest, would have approved.
“Saul Barnard was born near here under a white alder,” said forest guide Hynie Trudeau as his Suzuki Jeep whined up Krisjan’s Nek. Earlier, on a trail named Circles in a Forest, Hynie had pointed out a quar tree. “See how they grow, with those holes in the trunk? Saul climbed one to sleep in when he was chasing Old Foot. Easy to climb when there’s an elephant around.”
The brooding presence of novelist Daleen Matthee is everywhere in the newly proclaimed Garden Route National Park (GRNP). There’s Jubilee Creek where, in Circles in a Forest, Saul panned for gold; the remains of Millwood Village, where his beloved Kate taught scruffy miners’ kids; the fynbos island where woodcutters forced Benjamin to live in Field’s Child.
It’s as if fiction is informing fact, as the park unfolds to a public steeped in Matthee’s extraordinary novels. Partly, this is because she found a rich history lying around, unused, and simply picked up names, places and events and stitched them into her books.
Fiction again collided with reality at Goudveld Forest gate when I came across two brothers straight out of the 19th century. Hendrik and Michael Zeelie were gentle souls, but had the wild, tangled appearance of deep-forest woodcutters. Sure enough, ‘Old Zeelie’ appears on the first page of Dreamforest, cautioning about irritable elephants.
Anyone who has read Matthee will be able to make more sense out of this sprawling park that incorporates impenetrable swaths of forest, mountain ranges, a colourful history, secretive elephants, the entire town of Nature’s Valley, the Knysna estuary and a marine park stretching out into the Indian Ocean. The forest she writes about once extended west past Storms River and, in that section, there’s still enough in which to get lost (and people regularly do).
A road winds down from the N2 near Storms River through towering trees to a Sanparks seaside campsite, which also has and a restaurant. Accommodation and camping facilities at the mouth are really good – which locals know – so book early. I had a meal at the restaurant, with its views of forest and crashing surf. Maybe the chef was having an off day, however, because the food resisted improvement even from dollops of tomato sauce.
From the campsite, I hit the waves in the park’s 100-horsepower inflatable. We headed out to sea, then dived into the mysterious canyon cut by the Storms River through layers of black and orange sandstone. Upstream from the river’s trademark suspension bridge, the boat nosed through inky-black water. Passengers gaped and cameras clicked, fruitlessly attempting to capture the mood set by the towering cliffs and eerie bat cave. It was like sailing down a gullet between enormous jaws about to go snap.
Swinging from the Trees
Up in the forest near Storms River village is an adventure that beats scrambling up a quar tree to escape an elephant: you can flit from tree to tree like a Narina trogon. Tsissikamma Canopy Tours has rigged stout steel cables between towering trees – using soft rubber pads so no damage is done to the forest. Mary Funeka hitched my harness to a pulley, showed me how to put on the brakes and sent me hurtling between platforms in the canopy. Often, I couldn’t even see the ground, it was so far below.
This section of the park has two world-class trails – the Tsitsikamma (where you can slackpack between mountain huts carrying almost nothing) and the Otter (where you have to carry the lot). (See Getaway, March 2010.)
Further west, the park gets more patchy, with a southern coastal section of mainly forest and a mountain arm of mostly fynbos. Between the two – like ham in a green sandwich – live more than 1000 farmers and freeholders. Sections of the park are cut up by plantations. Some of these are in the process of being felled to allow natural regrowth to come through; the fate of others is rather more disputed. Logic says that all these areas should be integrated into one connected unit -but it isn’t that simple.
Negotiations, according to the general manager ol the GRNP, Dr Nomvuselelo ‘Mvusy’ Songelwa, are ongoing and tricky. “We’re in the business of conservation without boundaries,” she said. “We have the largest continuous indigenous forest in the country – 43500 hectares of it. But we also have 80000 hectares of fvnbos, over 3400 hectares of lakes and a marine protected area of 27500 hectares. Talk about diversity! And no fences. That makes this a pretty unique place – and a tough management proposition. We have to get buy-in from our many stakeholders or the park just won’t work.”
Into the Deep Forest
It’s a busy, winding road from Storms River past Plettenberg Bay to Knysna – the last part dotted with interesting curio and food stalls tucked into the forest, an elephant and raptor sanctuary and even a retirement camp for displaced wolves. Near a site named Garden of Eden, where you can wander among forest giants or mountain bike to your heart’s content, you can put your feet up in the total luxury of Tree Top Chalet.
Rumour has it that the chalet was built for a cabinet minister who liked to be up in the canopy. It’s on a steep slope, perched on long gum-poles that raise it up to treetop level. You can hire it from Sanparks and be spoiled; it even has a spa-bath. All you need to bring is food and sparkling wine.
Diepwalle is about 22 kilometres north of the N2 near Knysna. That’s where a stonechat perched on the arm of Matthee’s delightful hero of Dreamforest, Karoliena Kapp, as she sat with her back to a tree, and where she led tourists arriving on the old coffee-pot timber train who wanted to see elephants.
Today, the train is a memory, but there are still stonechats and (they say ) elephants. Diepwalle has a forester’s station as well as cottages, platforms among the trees for tents, a tearoom and a quirky guesthouse in an old forester’s home built in 1893. The night I slept there the rain pattered down and teased rich, peaty smells out of the surrounding forest. In the morning sun-kissed mist swirled among the trees.
There are trails radiating from Diepwalle – some official and marked, others made by elephants or woodcutters. As the mist began to lift, the forest captured me like an enchantress. Ancient kalander, stinkwood and quar tree bowls were as black as a fork-tailed drongo.
Between them, seeking light in the gloom, were wild irises, carrot ferns, paintbrush lilies and black witch hazel. Higher up, rays dappled the soaring trunks like a francolin’s breast and, overhead, the canopy gleamed lourie green. Dewdrops touched by the sun glittered like fine glass.
The scene conjured up a line from Matthee: “The forest conceals so many things, so much old wisdom.”
Later that day, I joined Joey Jones and his team of huge Percheron dray horses hauling logs out of the forest – which they do with massive strength and startling speed. The trees are apparently cut in a sustainable way, but it was still sad to see forest giants felled and plucked out of their habitat.
That afternoon, on the advice of Diepwalle’s head ranger, Klaas Havenga, I drove north through the forest and turned off into the Ysternek Nature Reserve to a viewpoint atop Spitskop. (Don’t try the final stretch in a sedan.) All around was gallery forest, to the north the Outeniqua Mountains and far south the Knysna Heads. The sunset from there was magnificent.
This is conservation without boundaries. It’s fulfilling to be doing something for the future survival of this area’s wilderness…
The Outeniqua Trail winds through that wild terrain. Six days with heavy packs – only for the fit and intrepid.
It was tempting, but discretion kicked in and I opted for kloofing instead – an exercise that involved Eden Adventures.
Daring the Dark Gorge
Chris Leggatt started and has been running the adventure outfit for years. He’s based in the Wilderness section of the GRNP and has canoes for wandering the lakes and rivers and guides who will take you boulder hopping, swimming and abseiling down a spectacular canyon.
To pluck up courage for kloofing, I checked into a neat A-frame cottage at Sanparks’ Ebb & Flow Rest Camp near Wilderness, borrowed a canoe and paddled up the Touws River. Beyond the tents and huts, the only sound was the splash of my paddles. Forest trees clung to steep cliff faces and trailed leafy dreadlocks in the mirror-calm water. A giant kingfisher lured me deeper – like a honeyguide to a comb – until evening led me back downriver.
Kloofing required instruction, wetsuits, lifejackets, sandwiches, a hike into the Kaaimans River gorge and courage for the first plunge into the night-black stream.
Guide Steven Seiler was encouraging, teaching us about the environment we were whooping and doggy-paddling through. We ha d a keen sense of the almost magical sentience of our surroundings. Icy water, hot boulders, golden cliffs, hallucinogenic forest -words can’t cope … Just go do it.
Matters Big and Small
The custodians of the ecological integrity of GRNP are a bunch of dedicated scientists housed in a barn-like research station at Rondevlei.
Led by Dr Rod Randall they study, set parameters, offer advice and worry about fish stocks, timber harvesting, avian viability, resource use, flood levels, fires, fynbos health, seahorses, alien invasion, when to open or shut estuary mouths and much more.
“What people first see and like, they wish would stay the same,” said aquatic scientist Dr Ian Russell. “But life’s fabric is constantly changing. We’re conservators of systems and managers of change. We look at relationships within the fabric.”
For vegetation ecologist Tineke Kraaij, the problem is what humans have changed to the park’s disadvantage. “Seeds have dispersed from the plantations and now pines have invaded the fynbos,” she said, spreading a huge map and pointing to light green bits. “It’s going to be a long, hard road to clear those areas of aliens.”
They are a small, vulnerable herd, but they’re fine… They’re a living heritage and should be declared a national treasure.
There was one last matter for me to settle – that of elephants. The park says there’s at least one and stops right there. Ask park people and the answers vary from one (the official stance) to maybe three (according to elly tracker Wilfred Oraai).
Then there’s naturalist Gareth Patterson’s research. Some years ago, he switched from studying lions to elephantising and moved into the area. He found droppings and dissected them to see what was being eaten, took DNA samples, measured marks on trees made by muddy pachyderm rumps and came up with an astounding six females and a possible three bulls. If he’s correct, they’re the most secretive elephants on earth. “It’s a small, vulnerable herd, but they’re fine,” he said when I tracked him down in a wooden cottage on the forest edge. “They’re a living heritage and should be declared a national treasure.”
Like Daleen Matthee’s books, the presence of elephants adds mystery and excitement to the new park. “I wish I could see an elephant,” Kate says to Saul in Circles in a Forest. ”
Do you often see them?” He nodded.
“Big ones?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Like thousands of visitors to the forest, I had the same wish as Kate. Gareth wasn’t about to take me elephant hunting – he doesn’t want them disturbed – but up above Krisjan’s Nek, guide Hynie Trudeau found the next best thing: elephant droppings.
“It came down here; see the flattened fynbos,” he pointed. “They may be called forest elephants, but they feed in the fynbos. It was probably heading down to Gouna Forest. That’s where Saul….”
Right then, the presence of Saul Barnard was as tangible as the kok-kok of a Knysna turaco. Anything could still be hiding down there: a tribe of wild woodcutters, a herd of elephants- or the entrancing spirit of Daleen Matthee. “Go well Old Foot,” I said, staring at the vast tousled forest.
Text and photos by Don Pinnock. This article was taken from the June 2010 edition of Getaway magazine.
Travel planner
Getting there
The Garden Route National Park is to the north and south of the N2 between George and Storms River. There are park offices in George, Wilderness, Knysna and Storms River.
When to go
The area has a mild climate, with moderately hot summers and chilly winters. Most rain falls in spring and autumn, although
How to book
For Sanparks bookings, tel 021-428-9111, e-mail, website. There are many excellent hotels, guesthouses and bed and breakfast establishments in the park’s vicinity and the towns of Knysna, Plettenberg bay and George. Visit Getaway.
More info on the town of Knysna | More info on the Garden Route area |
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